8.
The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium and a new biodiversity
center at the Montréal Botanical Garden, Anne
Bruneau, Institut de recherche en biologie végétale,
Université de Montréal
Stuart Hay, Assistant curator of
the Marie-Victorin Herbarium
Photo: The Montréal Botanical Garden |
The Canadian University Biodiversity Consortium is
a partnership headed by the Université de Montréal,
in collaboration with the universities of British Columbia, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Toronto, Guelph, York, McGill, Laval, Acadia
and Memorial, the Montreal Botanical Garden, University of British
Columbia Botanical Garden, Devonian Botanical Garden, Harriet Irving
Botanical Garden, Memorial University Botanical Garden and the Royal
Ontario Museum. The Consortium was recently funded by the Canadian
Foundation for Innovation programme to a total of 16 million dollars.
This Consortium unites Canadian researchers from multiple disciplines,
renowned for their expertise in a diversity of taxonomic groups,
tools and approaches. The project focuses on three of the most diverse,
and ecologically and economically important groups of organisms:
plants, insects and fungi, the latter two representing some of the
most poorly understood and inventoried organisms world-wide. The
consortium has three principal objectives:
- The Consortium will develop a web-based querying system that
links collections databases from across Canada. Following the
model proposed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
(http://www.gbif.org/), this cyber-infrastructure will allow users
the possibility of querying, retrieving and displaying biodiversity
data recovered from museum and botanical garden collections across
the country. Biological collections are replete with geospatial,
temporal, numerical and historical information that can be used
for determining species and ecosystem-level responses to climate
change and other environmental disturbances, to biological invasions,
and to agricultural and forestry practices. This information is
crucial for the understanding and proper management of biodiversity.
- The Consortium will develop a laboratory facility for the isolation,
characterisation and conservation of biological samples. Rapid
and effective preparation of large numbers of samples, high-throughput
robotic DNA extraction, and genetic and microscopic characterisation
will be used for fast and economic processing of thousands of
environmental samples needed, for instance, in studies of micro-fungal
species. This facility will be used to study and discover new
species, to characterise variability within known species, and
to identify isolates of high environmental significance or of
biotechnological interest. This new laboratory will be available
for use by all partner institutions and their collaborators.
- Another major goal of the Consortium is to ensure long-term
conservation of museological collections at universities across
Canada. A new building, to be located at the Montreal Botanical
Garden, will house the Marie-Victorin Herbarium (950,000 specimens),
the Ouellet-Robert entomological collection (1,000,000 specimens),
the Insectarium entomological collections (165,000 specimens),
and the mycological collection of the Cercle des Mycologues de
Montréal (4,000 specimens), as well as the high throughput
laboratory facility and the main server for the cyber-infrastructure.
Long-term conservation will be ensured in temperature- and humidity-controlled
museological conditions appropriate for the collections. Associated
with well-known public institutions, which each year host millions
of visitors, the value of these collections will be highlighted
through dynamic scientific exhibitions illustrating the importance
of collections and of biodiversity studies. The Consortium has an
important role in public awareness of biodiversity, in instilling
in youths a respect for the environment, and in promoting the natural
wealth within Canada.
By creating a network of excellence and expertise on plant, insect
and fungal systematics and biodiversity, this Consortium represents
an important national effort to face the challenge of decline in
taxonomic expertise and the need for rapid identification and organisation
of biodiversity data. The project will also speed up the discovery
of the innumerable still-unknown species of the Canadian biota,
and help establish and promote the best means for a sustainable
use of this natural wealth. This Consortium will be important in
inventorying, understanding and protecting biodiversity.
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Yann Vergriete
Project coordinator
Institut de recherche en biologie végétale
The Montréal Botanical Garden
4101, rue Sherbrooke Est
Montréal (Québec) H1X 2B2
CANADA
www.bgci.org/canada
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