September-December, 2012 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 31 Nos. 3-4 
potentially growing on one another and it takes about 2 hrs per speeimen to do slide work. 
Many labs are now using sponges for all sorts of researeh and sponge farming might be the wave 
of future. 
Dave threw out a last tidbit for us to ponder when eonsidering the wonderful world of sponges - 
he suspeets that sponges have unique relationships with the animals they might be growing on, 
sueh as tunieates, eorals, ete. 
With that we wrapped up the day. We were all very grateful to have a true sponge expert in our 
midst but we left the meeting a bit overwhelmed with our newfound understanding of just how 
diffieult the task of identifying sponges really is. 
5 NOVEMBER 2012, MOLLUSCS, OCSD 
Attendance: Megan Lilly, Wendy Emight, CSD; Heather Peterson, SFPUC; Kelvin Barwiek, 
Ken Sakomoto, Miehael Vendraseo, Mike MeCarthy, Laura Terriquez, Rob Gamber, OCSD; John 
Ljubenkov, DCE; Larry Lovell, Bill Power, Terra Petry, LACSD; Tony Phillips, eonsultant; N. 
Seott Rugh, BPS A; Angela Eagleston, EeoAnalysts Ine.; Emile Fesler, BioVeyda; Carol Paquette, 
MBC; Bryan White, CSUF/SCCWRP 
President Larry Lovell opened the meeting with the usual round of introduetions and upeoming 
meeting announeements. Additionally he announeed the upeoming 2013 SCAMIT offieer 
eleetions and the nomination of Laura Terriquez (OCSD) for Treasurer, as for the other positions, 
eurrent offieers were nominated for another term. 
Tony Phillips then asked those present, if possible, to eolleet some enteropneust speeimens in 
EtOH for genetie and ID work. 
The seienee portion of the day started with a presentation by Bryan White who is a graduate 
student of Dr. Eemisse at CSUF and is also working with SCCWRP. His thesis projeet deals with 
eoaleseent DNA teehniques and he gave an informative and eoneise presentation explaining how 
using these teehniques might help us more easily separate and determine eryptie speeies. An 
overview of his presentation is below. 
Coalescent-based species delimitation: A new method of delimiting species for use in DNA 
barcoding with applications in species identification, biomonitoring, and conservation 
Bryan P. White 
DNA bareoding is a rapidly growing field with applieations in speeies identifieation, 
biomonitoring, and eonservation, and typieally foeuses on the amplifieation of a single 
mitoehondrial gene, eytoehrome oxidase 1 (COl), and the delimitation of COl sequenees into 
haplotype elusters. However, there is no widespread aeeepted standard method through whieh 
haplotype elusters are delimited into putative speeies. Many workers have suggested using 
striet genetie distanee eutoffs within range of 1-3%, but striet eutoffs yield differing results 
depending on the data set and are based on the assumption that mutation rates are similar 
aeross all animal phyla. This study seeks to test a new method of speeies delimitation ealled 
eoaleseent-based speeies delimitation (CBSD). Aeeording to CBSD, speeies entities are delimited 
based on eommon eoaleseent points, the points at whieh all members of a population share a 
eommon aneestor, so that all individuals that share a eommon eoaleseent point originated from 
Publication Date: 6 July 2016 
