Comments on: Personal Biodiversity Information Retrieval http://www.localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/ Information: It's the Magic Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:49:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Ken-ichi http://www.localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/comment-page-1/#comment-148 Ken-ichi Sat, 16 Dec 2006 12:58:29 +0000 http://localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/#comment-148 Hah, you are quite right, mangosquasher, it's a devil's coach-horse, a non-native beetle from Europe. The Irish apparently thought it was a sign of corruption. I forgot to include the name. Around here I've only seen them in grassy areas along the coast. k7, I've yet to try any of the more general human-powered question answering services, but I'd be interested to see how well they work for something like this. As far as tissue samples go, the cost of sequencing is certainly going down, but since the popular market for arbitrary species identification is very small, I doubt this will happen any time soon. Sequencing technology aside, it's actually quite hard to get a high level of identification accuracy even when you have the genetic sequence data, due to high levels of genetic variation within some species. My impression is that efforts at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_barcoding" rel="nofollow">DNA barcoding</a> to date have been only moderately successful. Hah, you are quite right, mangosquasher, it’s a devil’s coach-horse, a non-native beetle from Europe. The Irish apparently thought it was a sign of corruption. I forgot to include the name. Around here I’ve only seen them in grassy areas along the coast.

k7, I’ve yet to try any of the more general human-powered question answering services, but I’d be interested to see how well they work for something like this. As far as tissue samples go, the cost of sequencing is certainly going down, but since the popular market for arbitrary species identification is very small, I doubt this will happen any time soon. Sequencing technology aside, it’s actually quite hard to get a high level of identification accuracy even when you have the genetic sequence data, due to high levels of genetic variation within some species. My impression is that efforts at DNA barcoding to date have been only moderately successful.

]]> By: k7lim http://www.localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/comment-page-1/#comment-146 k7lim Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:28:57 +0000 http://localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/#comment-146 have you tried things like ask.metafilter.com or yahoo! answers? how long until the average lay naturalist can take a tissue sample and get some kind of species identification? have you tried things like ask.metafilter.com or yahoo! answers?

how long until the average lay naturalist can take a tissue sample and get some kind of species identification?

]]> By: mangosquasher http://www.localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/comment-page-1/#comment-143 mangosquasher Sat, 16 Dec 2006 06:37:09 +0000 http://localoaf.org/2006/12/15/personal-biodiversity-information-retrieval/#comment-143 The only mantis I know is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Praying_Mantis_%28martial_art%29" rel="nofollow">praying</a> <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=RXLhiCgh4XU&mode=related&search=" rel="nofollow">kind</a> -- haha, kidding! Anywho, for the black beetle thingie, is it this? --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_coach-horse_beetle The only mantis I know is the praying kind — haha, kidding!

Anywho, for the black beetle thingie, is it this? –> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_coach-horse_beetle

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