Living water mites can look like moving gems in benthic samples from freshwater habitats. What do we know about these fascinating creatures, and how easy is it to barcode them?
Sperchon glandulosus,a common species in low and middle order streams. Photo Reinhard Gerecke.
True water mites are 0.2-5 mm large arachnids that are commonly found in all kinds of freshwater. Under undisturbed conditions, they are particularly frequent and species-rich in lakes, running waters and springs. They are generally recorded also from peat bogs and temporary ponds. Water mites constitute an important element in freshwater ecosystems and many species have specific habitat requirements. This make them suitable for biomonitoring, but extended use is hampered by challenging taxonomies and size. Thus, DNA barcoding would be an excellent tool to increase the use of water mites in freshwater assessments.
This is one of the reasons why we (Elisabeth Stur, Gaute Kjærstad and Torbjørn Ekrem) at the NTNU University Museum started building a reference library of Norwegian water mites. We managed to convince world expert Reinhard Gerecke to collaborate with us to have Norwegian and Greenland water mites identified and barcoded.
The diversity and distribution of Norwegian water mites are poorly known: current unrevised lists comprise about 150 species, mostly recorded from eastern Norway only. At the same time, several species have their type localities in Norway, being first described by the Norwegian priest and arachnologist Sig Thor (1856-1937). This makes knowledge of the Norwegian fauna taxonomically important in a wider perspective, as recently exemplified by Pešić et al. (2017) in their revision of the Hygrobates fluviatilis complex.
When we started our project, there were no records of water mites from Norway and Greenland in the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). Now there are sequences of 22 identified species from Norway and 3 species from Greenland. Although this only is a very small percentage of the expected fauna, it is a proof of concept for DNA barcoding in Norwegian water mites: DNA barcodes are well suited to identify species and can be used to detect cryptic diversity. One example for this is the species Lebertia porosa, first described by Sig Thor in 1900 and with the high number of 37 junior synonyms. This species has no less than 7 BINs in our dataset and is a good candidate for thorough taxonomic scrutiny.
The water mite Lebertia porosa has seven BINs in Norway. Photo Reinhard Gerecke.
Moreover, we tested two different ways of DNA extraction from sampled tissues: Dissection of legs or non-destructive extraction from whole specimens. Both methods performed equally well with a success rate of 84%. Thus, there are multiple options to preserve vouchers for DNA barcodes.
Given the high diversity and importance of water mites in freshwater ecosystems, the knowledge of the Norwegian fauna would gain much from an inventory project on this group. It is also obvious that a proper representation of identified water mites in the barcode reference library is needed to fully appreciate future environmental barcoding in assessments and management of freshwater ecosystems.
In an article recently published in the journal Insect Systematics and Evolution, Xiaolong Lin describes eight species of non-biting midges new to science.
“It is particularly rewarding to find and describe new species from a well investigated area such as Norway” says Lin, “but also exciting to find new species from my home country China”.
Non-biting midges, or chironomids, are small insects, and a compound microscope must be used to see the subtle differences between closely related species. However, they are easily separated by DNA barcodes.
“Because several of the new species first were detected using DNA barcoding, it was a natural thing to name one of them after the father of DNA barcoding Paul Hebert”, Lin explains. “The fact that this species is found in Arctic Canada, an area where Hebert have worked intensively, was particularly nice”, he says.
Tanytarsus heberti, the small midge of 2,5 mm from Churchill and Wapusk National Park in Manitoba, can be separated from its closest relatives by its lighter body colour, small details in the male genitalia and a characteristic DNA barcode.
Co-authors and supervisors Elisabeth Stur and Torbjørn Ekrem at the NTNU University Museum elaborates:
“Xiaolong has done a very thorough and good investigation of this group of non-biting midges. Not only does he describe new species in his thesis, but he analyse their evolutionary relationship and geographical distribution. This is a great contribution to our knowledge of a species rich and important group of insects”.
Dr. Xiaolong Lin post defence of his PhD-thesis at NTNU. Photo: Torbjørn Ekrem CC-BY.
The Natural History Museum in Oslo and NorBOL participated at the Oslo Science Fair September 23-24, 2016. At our stand we communicated challenges with biological, morphological and genetic species definitions. Fifteen hundered shots of juice were served with the task of identifying which three fruits the juice was composed of. To help them with the task, people received visual DNA barcodes of the fruits as well as a reference library of fruit barcodes. Many learned how DNA barcoding can be used to determine the content of food.
Gunnhild Marthinsen serves unknown juice at the Oslo Science Fair. Photo Dag Inge Danielsen CC-BY.
PhD-student Sonja Kistenich shows how DNA barcoding works. Photo Gunnhild Marthinsen CC-BY.
On Friday September 23 time had come for Researchers’ Night in the NTNU Science Building. Like previous years, the interest for participation was great and more than 1100 high school students trawled the stands, attended lectures and visited labs at NTNU. NorBOL was present with a stand on DNA barcoding and LifeScanner.
Xiaolong and Aina welcome visitiors to NorBOL’s stand at Researchers’ Night 2016. Photo Torbjørn Ekrem CC-BY.
At our stand, students and teachers were challanged to do practical DNA barcoding: Three visualized DNA sequences from unknown prey had been retrieved from a boreal owl pellet and could be compared to known sequences in a reference library. The task was not necessarily simple and created good discussions among the participants. As prize and proof of particpation, the stydents received #mydnabarcode stickers.
Torbjørn explains how DNA barcoding works. Photo Xiaolong Lin CC-BY.
Active visitors at the NorBOL stand. Video Torbjørn Ekrem CC-BY.
Thanks to Aina, Erik and Xiaolong for excellent contributions to the NorBOL stand and Researcher’s Night!
Congratulations to NorBOL for reaching 10 000 barcoded species! We are now halfway to our target of DNA barcoding 20 000 species from Norway. The benchmark was celebrated at the NorBOL steering group meeting in March and covered by the journal Gemini and forskning.no. Congratulations to everyone involved!
NorBOL and the Natural History Museum in Oslo have this winter worked together with a biology-class at Hersleb upper secondary school in doing an invetory of the insect diversity in the Botanical Garden.
The Malaise trap in the Botanical Garden in Oslo. Photo Gunnhild Marthinsen (CC-BY).
Last August, the students deployed a Malaise-trap in the garden and helped collecting the samples. They then sorted the insects to what they thought were different species based on appearance. One hundred and fifty animals were sampled and sent to the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics in Guelph for sequencing.
The students will now compare the sequencing results with their own identifications.
Eager students sort the Malaise Trap samples. Photo Gunnhild Marthinsen (c).
Through this project the students learn about species diversity and DNA analyses. They experience how difficult it is to determine species based on appearance, especially when not being an expert, and that DNA barcoding works well both for identification of species and for getting an overview of the species diversity.
The project revealed a high diversity of Diptera and Hymenoptera in the Botanical Garden; ca 80 species were found among the 150 that were submitted for analyses. Among the collected species were also a few rarities that are only known from a few localities in Norway; one of the species can even turn out to be new to Norway.
The symposium Biodiversity and DNA Barcodingwas held at the Scandic Nidelven hotel 11-12 November 2015. Nearly 100 participants from Norway, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Germany, Czech Republic and UK had found their way to Trondheim, making this meeting larger than originally expected. The conference turned out to be a good meeting place for nature managers, barcoders, participants in the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative and others interested in biodiversity and DNA barcoding.
As the program can confirm, there was a great diversity in the talks, both on topics and organism groups. We were guided through taxonomic challenges in fungi, marine invertebrates and insects, many of which has been detected with the aid of DNA barcodes. We were invited on journeys into the deep oceans and into the “moss forest”, and introduced to the opportunities molecular methods give when studying food webs, pollination and microscopic organisms. We also learned about the The Planetary Biodiversity Mission, news from BOLD4 and aboutLifeScanner, a citizen-science initiative where identification of species through DNA barcoding is made available to everyone.
Speakers at the symposium. From left: Anders Hobæk, Christiane Todt, Marie Davey, Hans Tore Rapp, Frode Ødegaard, Inger Greve Alsos, Natasha de Vere, Endre Willassen, Kristian Hassel, Sujeevan Ratnasingham, Elisabeth Stur, Christer Erséus, Paul Hebert, Tomas Roslin. Tor Erik Brandrud and Gunn Paulsen were unavailable when the photo was taken. Photo Åge Hojem, NTNU University Museum, CC-BY.
Both organizers and participants seemed very pleased with the conference. Most things went as planned, the food was good, and even if we had music from the neighbouring room accompanying the last presentations on day two, the participants seemed pleased when leaving the venue. Thank you all for coming! More photos are available on Flickr.
Participants at the symposium Biodiversity and DNA barcoding 2015. Photo Åge Hojem, NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet, CC-BY.
The sixth international conference on DNA Barcoding just recently ended with wise words from Thomas Lovejoy, Dan Janzen and Paul Hebert: The species on our globe are going extinct faster than ever before and we have an urgent need to retrieve more knowledge of our biodiversity before it is gone for good.
The conference in Guelph, Canada was impressive in all sorts of ways and the scientific depth truly underlined the theme “Barcodes to biomes”. With more than 30 excellent invited speakers and 600 delegates from 60 countries, the meeting became an unparalleled academic success. Abstracts from all talks and posters have been peer-reviewed and published in the journal Genome.
All oral presentations were held in the Rozanski Hall at the University of Guelph. Photo Torbjørn Ekrem (CC-BY).
In addition to the academically strong profile, the organizers clearly had valued good social settings in the planning of the conference. Moreover, a few other special arrangements made this a memorable event: The group photo (or rather film) was shot with a drone, the conference had its own beer (that had been barcoded of course) and the talks of all invited speakers was streamed live on YouTube. Most impressive, however, was perhaps that the results from a bioblitz held in a nearby reserve the day before the conference were ready by the end of the meeting! The specimens have been barcoded and the results assembled in a paper with 120 authors already submitted to the Biodiversity Data Journal. If you think I am the only one that is impressed by the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference, check out tweets with the hashtag #dnabarcodes2015.
The meeting decided to establish the International Society for the Barcode of Life (ISBOL) and an interrim board will be established to work out the guidelines and tasks for the society. Two important areas will be the development of new standards for DNA barcoding as technology advances and support the organization of international conferences.
It will be difficult to exceed this year’s conference in scientific breadth and organization. Perhaps this was one the reasons why Prof. Michelle van der Bank from the University of Johannesburg suggested the Krüger National Park as venue for the next conference in 2017. A setting in one of the world’s most famous protected wildlife areas certainly should attract many participants!
The Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre and the Norwegian Barcode of Life Network (NorBOL) have the pleasure of inviting you to a symposium on Biodiversity and DNA barcoding in Trondheim November 11-12, 2015. The goal of this conference is to communicate new knowledge on Norwegian species and show how DNA barcoding contributes to our understanding of species diversity, biology and ecology. We think the symposium will be an attractive venue for researchers, student and managers of biodiversity and are pleased to have distinguished speakers from Canada, UK, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Among the confirmed participants are Paul Hebert, Sujeevan Ratnasingham, Natasha de Vere and Tomas Roslin. For more information on the conference, speakers and registration, please visit the symposium website: Biodiversity and DNA barcoding. Welcome!
The organizing committee
Ingrid Salvesen
Ingrid Ertshus Mathisen
Aina Mærk Aspaas
Torbjørn Ekrem
The Norwegian Barcode of Life initiative is now established as a national research infrastructure for DNA barcoding. As part of the project, four barcode managers were employed in the spring 2014. These enthusiastic persons each sit at one of the university museums in Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø and Trondheim and will be regional contacts, coordinators and support in the development of the barcode library of the Norwegian fauna, flora and fungi. We are very pleased to have such good candidates in these positions and look forward to close collaboration! Here are the NorBOL barcode managers:
Aina Mærk Aspaas
Aina has a background in freshwater ecology and has experience with molecular techniques in ecology and systematics. For her MSc-project she worked on benthic invertebrates in sub-alpine streams, focusing on mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies. She has experience from various barcode projects and BOLD and has been supervising new users at the national workshops on DNA barcoding in 2013 and 2014. Aina will be the regional contact for Central Norway and coordinate the barcoding of freshwater invertebrates and bryophytes in Norway.
Marie Kristine Føreid
Marie is an ecologist who did her Bachelor at the University of Bergen and MSc at the University of Tromsø. Her Master-thesis «Regional phylogeography of a clonal salt marsh species, Puccinellia phryganodes (Poaceae), in Svalbard» was done in collaboration with the University Centre of Svalbard (UNIS). Marie has experience from field work in the Arctic and with AFLP-techniques and has worked on a Clean lab with ancient DNA and multiple extraction techniques. Marie will be the regional contact for northern Norway and in collaboration with Inger Alsos coordinate the barcoding of vascular plants and ascomycetes in Norway.
Katrine Kongshavn
Katrine has worked at the invertebrate department at the University Museum of Bergen since 2009. She has a MSc in biodiversity, evolution and ecology and has been involved in various projects at the museum. Among these are curation of material from the MAREANO-project, african marine benthic invertebrates, Skagerrak and polychaetes from Norwegian waters. The barcoding of marine invertebrates and taxonomically related groups (e.g. terrestrial Annelida and Crustacea) will be coordinated from the University Museum in Bergen. The natural history collections have an active blog that also reports on NorBOL news: http://evertebrat.b.uib.no/
Gunnhild Martinsen
Gunnhild Marthinsen has a PhD in population genetics on birds from the University of Oslo (2007). She has since then worked as DNA-lab technician and DNA barcode coordinator at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Gunnhild has broad experience in molecular genetic tools and has sequenced COI from many different animal groups. Her research interest has mainly been on speciation and speciation processes. As NorBOL barcode manager at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Gunnhild will be coordinating DNA barcoding of terrestrial insects, bacidiomycetes. lichens and smaller groups on non-marine invertebrates. She will also be the regional contact for eastern and southern Norway.
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Sperchon glandulosus, a common species in low and middle order streams. Photo Reinhard Gerecke.
The water mite Lebertia porosa has seven BINs in Norway. Photo Reinhard Gerecke.
All oral presentations were held in the Rozanski Hall at the University of Guelph. Photo Torbjørn Ekrem (CC-BY).
