BIO-GEEC: The German-Ecuadorian Consortium for Biodiversity (Stage 1)

Ecuador - one of the "hottest" global biodiversity hotspots.

Ecuador is a highly biodiverse country and all of its ecoregions belong to one of the "hottest" global biodiversity hotspots, which means that the very high biodiversity contrasts with an extreme level of habitat degradation. In this project, three German institutions and six Ecuadorian universities (17 scientists in total) form the German-Ecuadorian Barcoding Consortium (BIO-GEEC), which has three main objectives. First, we will develop a rapid pipeline for the genetic identification and characterisation of organismic groups of public and/or economic importance. We will create the physical infrastructure, databases, IT protocols and a web app for a comprehensive barcoding workflow and transfer the skills and tools available in Germany to our partner institutions in Ecuador. Secondly, we will implement and test this infrastructure in four sub-projects dealing with patterns of biodiversity in taxa and tissues of high relevance: seed plants (tissues, seeds and pollen), pollinating insects, venomous arachnids and soil microorganisms. Thirdly, we will establish an international network for mutual training and exchange.