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Welcome to the Ant Barcode of Life campaign website. Formally launched in mid-2008 (and building on proof of principle research ongoing since 2004), this DNA barcoding campaign aims to build a comprehensive COI barcode reference library for all ant species in the world (more than 12, 000 species). Fulfilling such an ambitious goal is not an easy task. This project is expected to be a long-term research program. We are fully aware of the challenges but also anticipate exciting discoveries along the progressing of the campaign. Instead of exploring multiple gene markers across a variety of taxa, the Ant Barcode of Life campaign focuses on a standardized mitochondrial COI gene fragment of a specific group of organisms. Thus species diagnosis of world ants using DNA sequences becomes feasible in a foreseeable future. Meanwhile, we incorporate the most up-to-date Ant World Checklist (http://www.antbase.org/) as the master checklist to ensure that the ant systematic studies at most front-line are reflected in the campaign.
Support from ant workers is critical to this barcoding effort. To ease the communications between all participating members, we built this website with a hope to provide these services:
- Provide instructions and protocols of DNA barcoding ants
- Create real-time report on ant barcoding projects
- Generate lists of most-needed species
- Host links to ant-related websites and contact information of campaign participants
- Report discoveries of barcoding studies such as association of life stages, differentiation of cryptic species, and needs for synonymization
- Serve as communication platform that is accessible to all ant workers, including systematists, phylogenetists, population genetists, ecologists, bio-monitoring workers, and amateur naturalists
- Report news relevant to ant and barcoding studies
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Progress Reports
