Portable DNA scanner aims to identify every bird species

[Andrew Taylor <>]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 01:08:04PM +1100, Kurtis Lindsay wrote:
> By 2011 the team
> declare they will have recorded every bird species in the world in their
> database and in doing so will discover a further 1000 bird species
> previously unrecognized to science as a result of splitting from known
> species.

I dozed at the back of a barcoding session at a conference last year.
Several researchers doing taxonomic work were eager to make the point
that the genetic information in the barcode was insufficient for
taxonomic work and there was no argument from the barcoding people.
It might flag possible split/lumps but you would need other information,
genetic or otherwise.

Everyone seemed  happy that barcodes would be sufficient to accurately
recognize most (not all) existing bird species.

Andrew