Global biodiversity is under threat from numerous natural and anthropogenic drivers but enumerating ecosystem wide biodiversity using traditional ecological approaches is usually an impossible task. Destructive sampling, limited resources and limited taxonomic expertise means that we are not assessing planetary biodiversity and interactions therein at sufficient temporal and spatial scales to understand global change and support ecosystem services. In the past 15 years, there has been a paradigm shift in our ability to understand the composition and distribution of complex communities, leveraged by the synergistic power of high throughput sequencing (HTS) and the field of environmental DNA analysis. This talk will overview the field, terminology, methodology and explore case studies from diverse habitats that are enabling the assessment of biodiversity in ways that to date, have not been possible.
About the Speaker
Si is one of the leaders of the Molecular Ecology and Evolution group at Bangor University and is interested in understanding the drivers of biodiversity in natural communities and how diversity is linked with ecological function, trophic relationships, ecosystem services and disservices, environmental and human health. With a breadth of collaborators, he has worked in many habitats including marine, with contemporary foci on freshwater, terrestrial and estuarine ecosystems.