Five years of FISH-BOL: Brief status report

Abstract

The Fish Barcode of Life Initiative (FISH-BOL) is a concerted global research project launched in 2005, with the goal to collect and assemble standardized DNA barcode sequences and associated voucher provenance data in a curated reference sequence library to aid the molecular identification of all fish species. This article is a detailed progress report (July 2010) on the number of fish species that have been assigned a DNA barcode. Of the approximately 31,000 currently known fish species, 25% have been processed successfully, with at least one species from 89% of all families barcoded; in this report we give a progress overview by taxonomy and geographic region. Using standard analytical protocols, differences in the barcoding completion rate between orders and families are observed, suggesting a potential PCR amplification bias. Overall, between 3 and 9% of the species analyzed failed to yield a “BARCODE compliant” sequence, depending upon how the data are filtered. When species with only a single representative specimen are included, the failure rate was 9%. This might derive from several sources such as mismatched primers and degraded DNA templates. In an attempt to account for the latter, when the analysis is restricted to species with at least two specimens examined, the observed failure rate is significantly lower (3%), suggesting that template quality is a source of concern for FISH-BOL. We, therefore, conclude that using a standard protocol with several specimens per species and PCR primer cocktails is an efficient and successful approach because failures were evenly distributed among orders and families. Only six orders with low species numbers (Pristiformes, Torpediniformes, Albuliformes, Batrachoidiformes, Gobiesociformes, and Petromyzontiformes) showed failure rates between 10 and 33%. Besides outlining an overarching approach for FISH-BOL data curation, the goal of the present article is to give guidance in directing sampling campaigns toward neglected or underrepresented families in order to complete the FISH-BOL campaign most efficiently.

Keywords::

• DNA barcode
• cytochrome c oxidase subunit I
• Fish Barcode of Life Initiative
• Barcode of Life Data Systems

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Julie Stahlhut and Justin Schonfeld (both Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph) for data discussion, strategy development for PCR primer success evaluation, and improvement of an earlier version of the manuscript. Ariel Levitsky helped with data analysis. FISH-BOL has been supported by many individuals and institutions worldwide (see www.fishbol.org) with organizational support primarily derived from the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, and technical support primarily derived from the Canadian Barcode of Life Network and the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) Project, headquartered at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO). Finally, the authors wish to acknowledge the many members of staff at BIO who have helped to make FISH-BOL a success.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. D. S. was supported by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to MarBOL. S. B. was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).