Message from CBOL's Chairman

Dear CBOL Member Organizations,

Many of you have had the pleasure of attending one of CBOL’s International Barcode of Life Conferences, either in London in February 2005 or in Taipei in September 2007. I’m happy to be able to invite you to the Third Conference which will be held in Mexico City during the week of 9-13 November 2009. CBOL’s Secretariat has created a Technical Program Committee that will be meeting shortly to develop the conference agenda. We welcome your suggestions for technical sessions and side-events that can be considered by this committee. Dr. Patricia Escalante, Chairman of the Department of Zoology in UNAM’s Institute of Biology, has kindly agreed to be Conference Chair and she has recruited a Local Organizing Committee. Please send your comments and suggestions to cbol2009@si.edu.

Access to biological specimens and the ability to transfer samples between countries are critical elements of DNA barcoding. CBOL’s Member Organizations have frequently asked the Secretariat for help in explaining barcoding to their national officials who control collecting permits and Material Transfer Agreements. In response to these requests, CBOL has developed an outreach brochure that describes the benefits of barcoding and the need for access to specimens. In addition, CBOL has held outreach events at meetings of the CITES and CBD conventions. Most recently, CBOL organized an international workshop on “Access and Benefit Sharing in Non-commercial Biodiversity Research”. The report of this workshop has been submitted to the CBD and will be presented at an upcoming meeting of CBD’s Access and Benefit Sharing Working Group.

CBOL will continue to take a proactive role in representing DNA barcoding and basic biodiversity research to CBD and other national and international bodies. Please continue to provide us with your ideas, experiences, and concerns.

I look forward to seeing you all in Mexico City at the Third International Barcode Conference!

Sincerely yours,

Scott E. Miller, Chair of CBOL’s Executive Committee
Smithsonian Institution

 

Message from Executive Secretary

Dear Colleagues,

If you’re looking for journals that are interested in publishing barcoding papers, please consider PLoS ONE. CBOL has been working with the Public Library of Science over the last year to create a standard format for DNA barcoding papers and two have been published in PLoS ONE in the last few months*: PLoS is eager to receive more manuscripts that meet the BARCODE data standard. Please see Advice to Authors [LINK to new pdf] on the CBOL website for more information.

“Biodiversity informatics” is the umbrella term that includes taxonomic data and all related data at the ecosystem, species, specimen and genetic levels. DNA barcode data are emerging as critical elements in linking specimens, taxonomic names and DNA data.

For this reason, CBOL is one of the co-sponsors of e-Biosphere 09: the International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics that will take place in London on 1-3 June 2009. The conference will be an opportunity to highlight the importance of barcode data in the wider field of biodiversity informatics and to build new connections to different types of data. The organizers have established an Online Conference Community for electronic discussions leading up to the conference. They have also issued a Technical Challenge to researchers, asking for real-time demonstrations during the conference of how well new biodiversity information enters the web and connects to different other databases.

Can barcoders go all the way from new samples to data in GenBank during the three-day conference? The e-Biosphere 09 conference is an opportunity to show that DNA barcoding represents the state-of-the-art in taxonomy.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me at schindeld@si.edu with questions about publishing in PLoS ONE or the e-Biosphere 09 conference.

Best regards,

David E. Schindel, Executive Secretary
CBOL, Smithsonian Institution


Call for nominations to Executive Committee

CBOL’s Terms of Reference specify that an Executive Committee will consist of the Principal Investigator on the grant that supports CBOL, CBOL’s Executive Secretary, and five members selected from nominations made by the Member Organizations. As of July 2009, there will be two unfilled seats on the Executive Committee. The current Executive Committee members are:

  • Scott Miller, Chair, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
  • David Schindel, Executive Secretary, CBOL, Washington, DC
  • Helida Oyieke, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi
  • Simon Tillier, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris
  • Kwang-Tsao Shao, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
  • Jose Soberón, University of Kansas, USA
  • Ione Egler, Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, Brazil

The terms of service of Drs. Oyieke and Tillier will come to an end in July 2009 and they cannot be extended under CBOL’s Terms of Reference.

Member Organizations are therefore invited to submit their nominations to the Executive Secretary (SchindelD@si.edu) no later than 1 May 2009. We seek nominations of senior researchers and institution officials with experience and standing in biodiversity activities, and who will be effective and energetic in providing CBOL with strategic advice and direction.

As specified in the Terms of Reference, the procedure for filling these three vacancies is:

  • Nominations will be solicited from Member Organizations by the Secretariat;
  • The nominees will be screened by the Secretariat with the goal of ensuring a balance on the Executive Committee with respect to geographic region, scientific expertise, taxonomic coverage, and gender;
  • The resulting slate of candidates will be presented to the Executive Committee, including those members whose terms are coming to an end, for review, adjustment, and preliminary approval; and
  • The slate of candidates will then be presented to the Member Organizations via electronic mail for their approval.
  • The slate of candidates will be considered approved if objections by fewer than 20% of the Member Organizations are received within two weeks.

 

Recent CBOL Meetings

The CBOL website provides information on past meetings and reports of our meetings. CBOL has held the following meetings recently:

  • Symposium on "Access and benefit sharing of Genetic Resources in the Pacific", Pacific Science Inter-Congress (Tahiti; March 2009)
  • Database Working Group meeting on “Interoperability of Museum, Taxonomic, and DNA Databases” (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois; January 2009)
  • An international workshop on “Access and Benefit Sharing in Non-commercial research” (Bonn, Germany; November 2008)
  • Regional Barcode of Life Meeting and training course for west and central Africa, Abuja, Nigeria (October 2008)

 

Upcoming Meetings

CBOL is a principal organizer of the following meetings. Please mark your calendars and refer to the CBOL website for more information on these meetings:

  • National barcode meeting, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (4-5 May 2009)
  • Marine Barcode of Life (MarBOL) Symposia:
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Massachusetts (30 April 2009)
    • Bremerhaven, Germany (16 April 2009)
    • Tokyo, Japan (21 May 2009
  • e-Biosphere 09 International Conference on Biodiversity Informatics, London (1-3 June 2009)
  • Third International Barcode of Life Conference, Mexico City (9-13 November 2009)

Recent Advances in Barcoding Science

The CBOL website offers a list of barcoding publications, many with links to the full articles. Here are a few highlights from the list of recent articles: