Calibrating Europe's Biodiversity using DNA Barcodes

Calibrating Europe’s Biodiversity using DNA Barcodes (ECBOL) is a European consortium. Its goal is a coordinated approach to DNA barcoding. The ECBOL initiative pursues its goal by several means. A network of leading labs for DNA barcoding is envisaged across Europe. These labs will barcode specimens from existing European natural history collections and specimens acquired by ATBIs (all taxa biodiversity initiatives) or targeted taxonomic sampling. A centralized bioinformatics hub is planned to make information present in local databases (i.e. collection databases, taxonomic resources, sequence repositories) available through a single interface. DNA barcoding related applications will be developed in dialog with stakeholder needs.

The ECBOL initiative aims at having member organisations from as many as possible European countries. Member organisations are typically natural history museums, zoological and botanical gardens and herbaria together with university departments, private biotech companies and other policy-directed bodies such as biodiversity organisations as well as governmental and inter-governmental organisations.

The ECBOL initiative is coordinated by Professor P.W. Crous (barcodeATcbs.knaw.nl) from the CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Utrecht, an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.