Ecology & biodiversity
Our range of laboratory and software services support ecological, biodiversity and conservation projects across the globe.
Genetic and analytical services for ecology and biodiversity
Overview
At DArT, we believe that it is impossible to separate agriculture from biodiversity, but sometimes it’s necessary to undertake research that is purely aimed at studying natural biodiversity across ecosystems.
Identifying populations of insects and plants in certain locations is applied research that may have importance across academic or government studies – or in analysing the impacts of industry on natural environments.Â
Through integrated DNA analysis, building datasets and studying subdomains as a continuum, we can identify population diversity, infiltration of weeds and other pest species, the incidence of diseases, and other useful measures of population genetics.Â
By applying this knowledge across agricultural systems we can help design concepts and cropping systems in an ecologically sound way.Â
Our DArT process combines data from multiple sources to build a clear picture of the consequences of human activity across soils, insects, birds and plants.
Our ecological services support research on soil, insects, fish, birds, plants and more. Â
1 of 1Genetic and analytical services for ecology and biodiversity Â
We offer the following genetic and analytical services in relation to ecology and biodiversity.
DNA extraction
We are highly experienced at extracting quality DNA from a hugely diverse range of sources – including bacteria, fungi, plants and animals.
Paternity testing
We use DNA analysis to determine relationships between individual samples, which is very useful for projects related to population genetics and landscape genomics.
While determining parentage is relatively simple and a few hundred DNA markers is often enough to achieve such a goal, many of our technologies, especially those producing higher marker densities, enable much more detailed insight into genetic relationships and family/pedigree structures.
Data management and storage
Ecologue is a part of our new data management and storage system dedicated to ecological research. The concept of creating this platform has emerged from our DNA profiling work for thousands of ecological projects, large and small, performed by DArT in the last decade.
Data analyticsÂ
We are in the advanced stage of integrating dartR package into our new data management and analytics platform. dartR offers a comprehensive set of functions for downstream ecological data analysis based on DArT genotyping data reports without a need for data transformations or reformatting.Â
Functions are available for data filtering, visualization after PCoA (Principle Coordinate Analysis), or to facilitate transfer of data between dartR objects and other packages like Newhybrids, Related, Phylip, Structure and Faststructure. Other tools for ecological data analysis are also in development, including our own solutions for Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS).
Further applications
- Establishing populations of native and pest species to test success or otherwise of conservation and control efforts
- Understanding the health of natural ecosystems to assess their impact on biodiversity and successful agriculture
- Determining population diversity and dynamics
- Biosecurity
- Close kin mark recapture
- Phylogenetics and evolution
- DNA-based and analytical services for ecology and biodiversity projects​
- Data collection in the field
Case study
DArT ecological genetic and analytical services have assisted large mineral exploration and extraction companies to meet their environmental protection requirements
