Abstract
The genetic diversity of populations plays a crucial role in ensuring species and ecosystem resilience to threats such as climate change and habitat degradation. Despite this recognized importance of genetic diversity, and its relevance to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it remains difficult to observe and synthesize genetic data at a national scale. The “Ira Moana—Genes of the Sea—Project” (https://sites.massey.ac.nz/iramoana/) has worked to improve stewardship of genetic data for Aotearoa New Zealand’s (NZ) marine organisms to facilitate marine genetic biodiversity observation, research, and conservation. The Ira Moana Project has established interoperable data infrastructures and tools that help researchers follow international best-practice (including the FAIR Principles for Data Stewardship and CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance) and contribute to a national genetic data resource. Where possible, the Project has employed existing infrastructures (such as the Genomic Observatories Metadatabase, GEOME) to allow interoperability with similar research activities, but has also innovated to accommodate the national interests of NZ. The Ira Moana Project has an inclusive model, and through presentations, workshops, and datathons, it has provided training, education, and opportunities for collaboration among NZ researchers. Here, we outline the motivations for the Ira Moana Project, describe the Project activities and outcomes, and plans for future development. As a timely response to national and international pressures on genetic biodiversity research, it is hoped that the Ira Moana Project will facilitate NZ researchers, communities, and conservation practitioners to navigate this crucial period, and provide tangible solutions nationally and globally.
Highlights
Genes are the fundamental level of the biodiversity hierarchy, yet genetic diversity has received less attention than species and ecosystem-level measures of biodiversity
There has been considerable, recent progress in the description of conservation-relevant genetic diversity measures (e.g., Hoban et al, 2020), including Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) for genetic composition1 and their communication to conservation practitioners (e.g., Rossetto et al, 2021; including policy advice).2. The calculation of such genetic diversity measures relies upon the availability of population genetic datasets (e.g., DNA sequences, microsatellite fragment length data, and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, SNPs) which are sampled from populations across a species range
In consultation with the GEOME developers, Network members, and end-users, we developed mandatory metadata fields, recommended fields, and some guidelines for metadata field use specific to the Ira Moana Project
Summary
Genes are the fundamental level of the biodiversity hierarchy, yet genetic diversity has received less attention than species and ecosystem-level measures of biodiversity. The Ira Moana Project has built a system of tools and resources that enable access to curated population genetic datasets of NZ marine organisms in support of genetic biodiversity observation, research, and monitoring (see Supplementary Material for community review of the project and activities to date)—but the work is on-going These tools will be maintained, and the genetic data resource will be continually updated by contributors. In collaboration with DivDiv and DIPnet, the Ira Moana Project recently co-hosted an “Online GEOME Datathon” (July 6–August 21, 2020) to aid in the curation and accessioning of raw genome-wide DNA sequences (held in the Sequence Read Archive, an INSDC repository) used to create population genetic datasets based on thousands of polymorphisms into the GEOME infrastructure (including several NZ datasets; Toczydlowski et al, 2021) These activities further highlight the international and continuing relevance of the national objectives that the Ira Moana Project has been advancing
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