Madagascar: need and opportunity

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Madagascar need and opportunity
Brian Fisher, California Academy of
SciencesMadagascar Biodiversity Center
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Alex Smith, Guelph
MBC inventory team
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1. What living things exist?
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2. Where do they live?
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178 inventory sites
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worker head measurements
HL
HW
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90 of taxonomic products
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never used
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Museum warehouse of dead creatures
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Not a spatio-temporal portal on life
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Is taxonomy dead?
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no
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in the middle of a breakthrough
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but
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taxonomists are dying
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Does this matter?
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If you study
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less so
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But, if you like
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you are in trouble
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Why does this matter?
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Species Scape
Organisms drawn proportional to number of species
in each group
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Lots of undescribed species
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Fewer taxonomists
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"suicidal" experiment
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linked to understanding impact of human
activities
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Dow Jones index to the environment
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Original Habitats 10 remain
Using taxonomic data, the government will triple
protected habitat in 5 years
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178 inventory sites
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Industrial-strength specimen processingstreamlin
es data management
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• Develop inventory methods
• Establish processing centers
• Accelerate identification
• Apply to conservation

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worker head measurements
HL
HW
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8,000 sequences 600 species
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Anochetus goodmani
Morphologically one species with deep
within-species CO1 divisions.
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Voucher Specimens and minimalist barcodes
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de facto database of Pacific region invasive ants
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Formicidae Madagascar Estimation of
Diversity
268 specimens collected from 4 different sites.


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RESULTS No significant difference between morphos
pecies or barcode OTUs estimates of taxonomic
richness
Smith et al 2005
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3,000,000
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719,000
0.3
10,000
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Dow Jones Index
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Mystrium mysticum
Mystrium fallux
Mystrium sp. nov.
Mystrium obertheri
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