DNA barcoding the fishes of Lizard Island (Great Barrier Reef)

By

Steinke, Dirk
deWaard, Jeremy
Gomon, Martin
Johnson, Jeffrey
Larson, Helen
Lucanus, Oliver
Moore, Glenn
Reader, Sally
Ward, Robert

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2017-04-13

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

5

Pages

1--12

Subjects

Biodiversity , Coral reef , DNA barcoding , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.5.e12409
eLocator: e12409

 

Abstract

To date the global initiative to barcode all fishes, FISH-BOL, has delivered barcodes for approximately 14,400 of the 30,000 fish species; there is still much to do to attain its ultimate goal of barcoding all the world’s fishes. One strategy to overcome local gaps is to initiate short but intensive efforts to collect and barcode as many species as possible from a small region – a barcode ‘blitz’. This study highlights one such event, for the marine waters around Lizard island in the Great Barrier Reef (Queensland, Australia). Barcode records were obtained from 983 fishes collected over a two-week period. The resulting dataset comprised 358 named species and another 13 species that presently can only be reliably identified to genus level. Overall, this short expedition provided DNA barcodes for 13% of all marine fish species known to occur in Queensland.