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Sanger barcodes, the normal time between collection and obtaining identification is 
two working days while it can be several weeks for cost-effective barcoding via NGS. 
This is why morphology is the identification technique of choice for all species where 
the relevant morphological features are obvious and easily accessible (or can be made 
assessable through better imaging). Such data can now be conveniently displayed 
online in digital reference collections (Ang et al., 2013a) and modem publishing also 
allows for image-rich species descriptions (Ang et al., 2013b). Ideally, morphology 
and DNA should be combined in recognising species and providing identification tools 
(Tan et al., 2010; Rohner et al., 2014). Such “integrative taxonomy” is most likely to 
identify accurate species boundaries and allows for species identification based on 
either type of data. 
In the Nee Soon hydrology and biodiversity project (Clews et al., 2018; Davison 
et al., 2018), our team used a wide variety of techniques to tackle species identification 
problems and to create tools for the future. The ultimate goal was to enable and to make 
it easier to identify biological specimens from Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest. A 
secondary goal was to generate more “democratic” identification tools; i.e., to provide 
tools that are less reliant on expensive and rarefy available taxonomic expertise. 
Democratisation of species identification can be achieved by generating higher-quality 
images that help non-experts identify species (Ang et al., 2013a). This approach was 
pursued for many animal and plant taxa and we generated a species database in which 
more than 500 species are illustrated. This database is also a colourful celebration of 
Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest’s glorious biodiversity. 
Main objectives 
1) Insect diversity. In order to explore the insect diversity of Nee Soon freshwater 
swamp forest, we used NGS-based species discovery techniques for targeting taxa that 
belong to different ecological guilds. 
2) Faunal identifications: Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest was extensively surveyed 
by Faunal Ecology teams (Ho et al., 2018; Tim et al., 2018) who collected a large 
number of specimens. We imaged these specimens using specialised digital camera 
systems and sequenced the CO/barcode for these specimens using Sanger sequencing 
and NGS. 
3) Floral identifications: The flora of Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest was studied 
by the Vegetation Ecology team (Chong et al., 2018) who provided samples for 
DNA barcoding. Initially, we targeted multiple plant barcode genes ( matK , rbcL, 
trnL, etc.) but due to PCR-inhibitors this was very expensive in terms of manpower 
and consumables. We therefore switched to NGS-based sequencing of chloroplast 
genomes via genome skimming. The sequencing efforts concentrated on trees and 
lianas because they are most relevant for understanding the vegetation ecology of Nee 
Soon freshwater swamp forest. To assist the floral field team with identifying tree 
