{"id":16847,"date":"2017-08-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/foragin-species"},"modified":"2020-09-10T14:04:28","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T21:04:28","slug":"foragin-species","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/foragin-species\/","title":{"rendered":"The Foragin\u2019 of Species"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a makeshift lab on British Columbia\u2019s central coast, a motley school of taxidermic fish hangs on the wall\u2014a halibut, a wolf eel, a massive salmon the size of a baby harbor seal, and more, forever frozen in a very unscientific tableau. They\u2019re relics of the fishing lodge that once occupied this spot, now home to the Hakai Institute\u2019s* Calvert Island Ecological Observatory. Other than a quick glance when they first enter the room, the people working in the space that serves as the institute’s winter dining hall are largely unimpressed by the trophy display of the region’s vertebrates. Heads down, eyes to petri dishes and buckets, microscopes and camera lenses, for three weeks their primary focus has been the marine invertebrates and algae of the area. Fish can<\/em> come in handy though. The room cracks up when someone asks, \u201cAny copepods today?\u201d Without missing a beat comes the reply: \u201cNo, but did you check any fish butts?\u201d<\/p>\n

From July 28 to August 11, Calvert Island was the site of an intensive effort to collect, identify, and document the nearshore marine life in the region\u2014it was a bioblitz on steroids. At the end of it all, the team of expert taxonomists, crack biologists, and keeners willing to rise at 4:30 a.m. to catch the lowest tides had collected and identified about 1,300 marine invertebrate species, approximately one-third of the known marine invertebrate diversity in the northeast Pacific region. Teams also sampled for algae,\u00a0fish, and meiofauna<\/a>. It was an effort without precedent in the region. \u201cThis [project] was very big, not only in terms of British Columbia, but in terms of North America,\u201d says Henry Choong, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM). \u201cWe\u2019ve seen these efforts in terms of tropical biodiversity, but not really here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Taxonomists, lab technicians, and Hakai science staff\u00a0follow a step-by-step process to prepare voucher specimens and tissues for DNA sampling. Photo by Grant Callegari<\/p><\/div>\n

The bioblitz was a partnership between the Hakai Institute and the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), a global network of marine observation stations of which the Hakai Institute is a member. \u201cOur partners are working together to understand how coastal ecosystems work,\u201d says Emmett Duffy, director of MarineGEO. \u201cHow is coastal marine life changing, why is it changing, and what are the consequences for people?\u201d<\/p>\n

To accomplish that, understanding biodiversity is key.<\/p>\n

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Getting a sense\u00a0of a region\u2019s marine biodiversity is often opportunistic\u2014a coast guard vessel accommodates scientists and their research, or there\u2019s funding for a one-off survey. Collecting is also driven by individuals\u2019\u00a0interests and proximity to population centers or marine research labs, explains Philip Lambert, an echinoderm<\/a> expert who for 35 years was the curator of marine invertebrates at the RBCM.<\/p>\n

Lambert spent a lot of time during his tenure traveling the British Columbia coast with colleagues, making observations and species lists of marine invertebrates, and collecting specimens that were unusual or could extend a species\u2019 known range. But biological surveys are expensive and time-consuming, so more accessible regions are often the best represented. In British Columbia that means Vancouver Island and the Strait of Georgia, as well as Haida Gwaii, which, although being remote, is biologically interesting so has long attracted scientific study.<\/p>\n

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A team of biologists explores a mussel bed in the intertidal zone, one of the habitats surveyed during the bioblitz. Photo by Chris Neufeld<\/p><\/div>\n

That leaves large swaths of the province\u2019s 27,000-kilometer-long coastline largely uncataloged. \u201cAs with anything,\u201d says Lambert, \u201cif you don\u2019t look for things, you don\u2019t find them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intensity of the bioblitz approach has distinct benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know very little about life on this planet and [the northeast Pacific coast] is one of the least-explored parts,\u201d says Gustav Paulay, a curator from the Florida Museum of Natural History who led the bioblitz team and has done similar projects around the world. \u201cThis is a very effective, efficient way to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The push at Calvert Island\u2014225 unique collecting outings, in the rocky intertidal, kelp forests, mudflats, and other nearshore habitats\u2014provides a baseline of information for future explorations.<\/p>\n

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In the bioblitz lab, Paulay orchestrates a very precise step-by-step process. Fluorescent pink duct tape delineates sequential workstations. The team first sorts, then identifies, then photographs the specimens. Next, each specimen is relaxed in a bath of clove oil, magnesium chloride, or other anesthetic that helps preserve the animal in the best state for future identification. (For example, a sea star with its arms extended rather than curled.) Tissue sampling, the final step before the sample is preserved, launches this bioblitz into a realm unimagined to biologists even just a few decades ago.<\/p>\n

Each organism collected is preserved as a voucher specimen\u2014the one tied to all the data, including species ID, and where it was collected and when. But a small piece of tissue will be sent for DNA sequencing for inclusion in the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). This repository stores the genetic information tied to a species, explains Dirk Steinke from the University of Guelph\u2019s Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, and is a genetic library of life on Earth.<\/p>\n