To monitor biodiversity, use this bowl of "soup" is enough

Science and Technology Daily reporter Zhao Hanbin

Leches, cockroaches, praying mantises.
.
.
In Gaoligong Mountain, Yunnan, these small animals are not only "toys" that their childhood partners hide in boxes and scream, but also have an unknown role-monitoring the biodiversity of the environment
.

As early as 2012, China Ke Xueyuan Ecology and Environmental Protection Center research team Wei-Li Yu, Kunming Institute of Zoology, led by researchers found that by mixing DNA sequencing of the insect samples in a certain area, can be cataloged and monitoring of the biological diversity of the region
.
They published the first research paper describing the high-throughput barcode technology process of "biodiversity soup" in the international journal "Ecology and Evolutionary Methods", and became one of the most cited and downloaded articles in this journal

Recently, Yu Weili’s team once again published “Biodiversity Soup II: High-throughput Barcode Process with Lower Error Rate” in the international journal “Ecology and Evolutionary Methods”.
The high-throughput barcode technology has been improved
.

"Biodiversity soup" vs traditional monitoring

"All living things contain DNA, even very small fragments, their DNA can be used for species identification
.
" Yu Weili said

The "biodiversity soup" uses this characteristic of biology, and analyzes the mixed biological DNA samples through continuously innovative molecular methods and sequencing technologies, and restores the species information and diversity characteristics in the mixed biological samples, that is, Ecologists often refer to the alpha diversity index and beta diversity index
.
This information is also the basis for our biodiversity monitoring

Previously, Yu Weili’s team compared the “biodiversity soup” with traditional biodiversity monitoring methods
.
The data used for comparison are all derived from biodiversity monitoring projects in Yunnan, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom, including 55,000 pieces of information on species such as lepidopterans and birds

"Traditional data can be said to be the gold standard for biodiversity identification.
However, obtaining such data requires high costs.
Therefore, conservation scholars and environmental managers often can only use limited information to make decisions
.
" Yu Weili introduced, because of its With a huge sampling and classification scale, research is inevitably limited to a small area and difficult to replicate effectively

The "biodiversity soup" technology is a novel biodiversity monitoring method that integrates high-throughput sequencing technology, which can analyze a large number of mixed biological samples at the same time to obtain high-precision ground biodiversity data
.
Compared with traditional monitoring methods that rely on a large number of taxonomy experts, this technology is faster and more efficient, has high reliability, and has new features for third-party inspection

"Upgraded version" can analyze samples more efficiently and accurately

Since the publication of the "Biodiversity Soup" technology, the Yu Weili team has been constantly improving all aspects of this technology, and trying to explore and expand the scope of application of this technology
.
They used the "biodiversity soup" technology to explore the biodiversity of moths in different altitude sections in the Ailao Mountain Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province, and the results showed that the same as the data based on traditional morphological identification, they can show the community of moths.

"In Ailao Mountain, we also used the same method to study the effect of fungal diversity on the decomposition of dead wood, and found that the more diverse fungi, the lower the carbon dioxide release rate of dead wood, which means that diverse fungi can make fallen wood rot more slowly.
, which for understanding fungal diversity provides an important clue in the maintenance of global ecosystem carbon balance in the role
.
"the first author of the paper, China Ke Xueyuan Dr.

Through in-depth collaboration with the Yunnan Provincial Forestry Planning Institute and the Ailao Mountain Nature Reserve Administration, the research team used the existing patrol management system of the reserve to analyze the leeches samples collected by the forest rangers using the "biodiversity soup" technology , By analyzing the vertebrate information contained in its blood DNA, to monitor the diversity of vertebrates in the Ailao Mountain Reserve
.
These are all successful cases of Yu Weili's team using the "biodiversity soup" technology to conduct biodiversity research and monitoring
.

In recent years, the "biodiversity soup" technology has been gradually integrated into the daily monitoring work of the nature protection management departments of various countries due to its fast, efficient, and wide monitoring range.
Scientific research on this technology has always been in related fields.
Research hotspots
.
The upgraded version of "Biodiversity Soup" obtained by Yu Weili's team optimized multiple technical links, which improved the entire experimental design and bioinformatics analysis process, reduced the error rate and increased the calculation speed
.

"The upgraded version of the Biodiversity Soup can analyze more samples more efficiently and accurately at one time.
For example, a monitoring project collects hundreds of mixed biological samples.
In the past, we needed to analyze it species by species, but With the help of this technology, we can analyze these samples at once
.
" Yang Chunyan said, I believe this technology will play a very important role in China's "sky-ground integration" monitoring system
.

Joint satellite and remote sensing for "sky-ground integration" monitoring

China is one of the countries with the richest biodiversity, and the protection of biodiversity is highly valued by governments at all levels in China
.

"Biodiversity investigation, assessment and monitoring are aimed at obtaining temporal and spatial continuity of biodiversity data.
This is the prerequisite for biodiversity conservation.
However, in the current biodiversity conservation research, how to quickly obtain a large amount of species information? It is still a problem that needs to be solved urgently
.
" Yang Chunyan told reporters
.

At present, the rapid development of technological means makes biodiversity monitoring enter a new era
.
At the same time, Chinese and foreign scientists have proposed a system framework that uses multi-dimensional remote sensing data and high-precision ground data to monitor biodiversity
.
China is the first country to explicitly include the "sky-land integration" monitoring system in the "Guiding Opinions on Establishing a Natural Reserve System with National Parks as the Main Body"
.
An important part of this system is to quickly and efficiently obtain detailed biodiversity information on the ground
.

China’s “sky-ground integration” monitoring system can provide multi-spatial scales, long-term spans, and continuous biodiversity data in the study area
.
At present, Yu Weili’s team has combined the “biodiversity soup” technology (ground) with satellite (sky) and near-ground remote sensing (air) data, and successfully conducted “sky-ground integration” exploration and application research in the Ailaoshan Nature Reserve
.

"The effective application of'sky-ground integration' to biodiversity monitoring requires urgent solutions to two issues: how to quickly and efficiently obtain detailed biodiversity information on the ground in areas monitored by remote sensing; and how to integrate high-throughput biodiversity signals
Connect with remote sensing signals .
" Yang Chunyan said that to solve the above problems, China has unique resources and technological advantages
.

It is reported that China’s remote sensing technology, geographic information system and global positioning system, as well as UAV near-ground remote sensing technology have always been at the forefront of the world, and have been applied in various environmental monitoring.
At present, there are multiple teams in China developing high-precision ground The team of Yu Weili is the first team to make this attempt to obtain biodiversity data; in addition, there are many nature reserves in China, some of which have been built earlier have abundant basic data accumulation and well-equipped field facilities.
Observation station
.

"Relying on these nature reserves to carry out the system exploration and application research
of'sky- land integration' will help realize the effective monitoring of China's biodiversity by this system as soon as possible, and occupy the frontier highland of biodiversity monitoring .
" Yang Chunyan said
.