Macrofaunal Soil Biodiversity

Project description
Only 7% of the Earth has been sampled for biodiversity, at very coarse scales, and primarily in a handful of wealthy Western nations. Soils are particularly poorly sampled, and virtually no collections have been done in the Caribbean. We have collected eDNA across ~50 locations in Barbados. Subsequent work will process the samples to estimate local species richness; develop a novel model, to combine environmental distances, sampling density, and observed species overlap to interpolate expected new (not yet observed) species. This will provide one of the only datasets for soil biodiversity in the Caribbean, and will provide a general tool to prioritize sampling and to estimate regional species richness.

PRISM project leader: Isabella Serrette
Collaborators: Kristin Saltonstall (STRI)

Publications: To follow