Metadata standards and practical guidelines for specimen and DNA curation when building barcode reference libraries for aquatic life

  • publication
  • 26-02-2021

Frédéric Rimet, Eva Aylagas, Angel Borja, Agnès Bouchez, Alexis Canino, Christian Chauvin, Teofana Chonova, Fedor Ciampor Jr, Filipe О. Costa, Benoit J. D. Ferrari, Romain Gastineau, Chloé Goulon, Muriel Gugger, Maria Holzmann, Regine Jahn, Maria Kahlert, Wolf-Henning Kusber, Christophe Laplace-Treyture, Florian Leese, Frederik Leliaert, David G. Mann, Frédéric Marchand, Vona Méléder, Jan Pawlowski, Serena Rasconi, Sinziana Rivera, Rodolphe Rougerie, Magali Schweizer, Rosa Trobajo, Valentin Vasselon, Régis Vivien, Alexander Weigand, Andrzej Witkowski, Jonas Zimmermann, Torbjørn Ekrem. Metabarcoding and Metagenomics 5: 17-33

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding is increasingly used to effectively and precisely assess and monitor biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. As these methods rely on data availability and quality of barcode reference libraries, it is important to develop and follow best practices to ensure optimal quality and traceability of the metadata associated with the reference barcodes used for identification. Sufficient metadata, as well as vouchers, corresponding to each reference barcode must be available to ensure reliable barcode library curation and, thereby, provide trustworthy baselines for downstream molecular species identification. This document (1) specifies the data and metadata required to ensure the relevance, the accessibility and traceability of DNA barcodes and (2) specifies the recommendations for DNA harvesting and for the storage of both voucher specimens/samples and barcode data.

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