Congratulations to our client BHP and our Biologic Seed team for winning the prestigious Golden Gecko Award for 2025!
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As living things interact with their environments, DNA from these plants and animals accumulates in their surroundings. This is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA.
As part of the environmental monitoring and impact assessment projects we complete for our clients, our team use eDNA techniques to extract and analyse samples from soil, air and water, which helps them to identify the species present in those environments. The success of eDNA sequencing depends on the amount of information available in DNA barcode reference libraries, which contain details of the known species.
Subterranean ecosystems, which exist underground, are known for being highly biodiverse – but also under-sampled and under-sequenced. Our Manager of Molecular Systematics, Dr Joel Huey, has recently contributed to a research paper which provides a roadmap for developing and curating barcode reference libraries for subterranean ecosystems.
Throughout this study, the researchers involved developed a barcode reference library for Bungaroo Creek in the Pilbara region. This creek is a major tributary of the Robe River and the home of a diverse range of subterranean species. In this study:
- Sequence data was generated from 195 specimens for up to four genes (known as COI, 18S, 12S, and 16S).
- These sequences were analysed and submitted to public databases, GenBank and BOLD (Barcode of Life Data Systems).
This study forms the basis of a publicly available data resource which can now be applied and used in future eDNA-based studies of subterranean fauna.
At Biologic, we support strategies to facilitate the sharing of DNA sequence data and are excited to see this kind of system being used in the industry.
Learn more
To learn more about this study, contact Dr Joel Huey or read the paper in full.
Guzik, et al. (2025). What are the best practices for curating eDNA custom barcode reference libraries? A case study using Australian subterranean fauna. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 146(1), p.blaf053. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blaf053
