Barcoding the Shoreline
Our Marine Biodiversity Center scientists have been sampling tidepools to build a "biolibrary" to identify the inhabitants of the coast's precious ecosystems.
Thousands of Angelenos and far flung visitors flock every year to California's famous coastline, a place of astounding natural beauty. But up and down the shoreline or intertidal zones of the Golden State, are spectacular inhabitants that few—or no—humans have ever seen.
The California Intertidal Biodiversity DNA Barcode Library Project will develop the first-ever standardized, openly accessible genetic reference database for these organisms. NHM’s Marine Biodiversity Center, leaders in the effort, have enlisted hundreds of scientists and students this year to scour hundreds of miles of coastline via large-scale “bioblitz” events to collect specimens in these biodiversity hotspots.
Using shovels, scrapers, sieves, nets of all sorts and their bare hands, they have already collected nearly 10,000 lots of specimens of crustaceans (think crabs), echinoderms (see starfish), polychaetes (colorful segmented worms), mollusks (think snails and slugs), algae (kelp and beyond), and more, including those tiniest of creatures–nematodes–that can only be seen under a microscope.
“With things that are down to a millimeter or smaller in size you can't even see them in the field, realistically,” Regina Wetzer, Curator and Director of the Marine Biodiversity Center, said, “you just pick up some sand or mud and then process that in the lab to get the organisms away from the substrate through very fine sieving. And then you look at stuff under a microscope and say ‘Whoa, there it is.’ "
There are many microscopic animals scooting around the shoreline that will be new to science.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
This gorgeous snail, Simnia vidleri, lives by eating the polyps of gorgonians, and is quite likely to turn up in the near-intertidal under floating docks in Southern California.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
Tiny ostracods like this Leuroleberis sharpei, just a few millimeters long, are among the (literally) thousands of species swimming around, usually unnoticed, in California’s intertidal zone.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
This cute “Globe Crab” lives just below the water on sandy beaches, burrowing in the sand for protection, launching out to forage for food.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
This striking marine worm, in the genus Myxicola, lives in tubes in muddy sediment, using its crown of tentacles to feed on particles suspended in seawater.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
The shockingly pink Corynactis corals live in cold water on the California coast. Closely related to the reef-building corals, these have no hard skeleton.
Amanda Bemis and Eve Moore
This alpheid shrimp is one of many species of shrimps that make their home on or near California’s intertidal zone — you’ll see shrimp in nearly any tidepool.
Dean Pentcheff of the Marine Biodiversity Center, one of the project’s core team members along with colleagues from other marine-focused Southern California institutions, says: “We are now in an era where it's possible to take a sample of the environment, let's say a cup of seawater, and get every DNA sequence that is appearing in that cup of seawater, which is DNA that's been shed from the organisms that are nearby. Seawater that comes from a tidepool will have DNA from the critters and algae that are in that tidepool." This project is creating the digital library of genetic reference sequences that will let us look up those species’ names using their DNA.
The ultimate success of the library is to enable the broader user community to quickly generate and analyze data about coastal biodiversity to support conservation and research. One potential question, for instance, could be related to human-induced environmental change: “Are snail species appearing further and further north as climate change warms the water?”
“This is an unprecedented study in California,” Pentcheff said, “We are incredibly excited to be doing this work.”
