Due to last year’s great success, the 2nd DNA barcoding workshop took place in September at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in the capital Lusaka.
As part of the OeAD project “Inventorying biodiversity in the tropics: Establishing a DNA-barcoding pipeline for characterizing and monitoring Zambia’s biodiversity” led by the University of Graz (Stephan Koblmüller and Lukas Zangl) and participation by ABOL and Prof. Cyprian Katongo (UNZA ) students and staff of UNZA were trained in all the necessary steps to create DNA barcodes. The workshop began with a series of lectures on various aspects of DNA barcoding as a standard approach to recording biodiversity, its possible applications in monitoring, the challenges of a national biodiversity initiatives and opportunities for students and doctoral candidates to conduct research in Austria. The remaining workshop days covered the entire process of creating DNA barcode references – from sampling to data analysis. The DNA barcodes generated from fish and dragonflies are intended to serve as a crystallization point around which a national initiative in Zambia can be formed. Using the dragonflies, the participants were also introduced to the preparation and identification of insects. Laboratory work with DNA extraction and PCR, as well as the processing and evaluation of sequence data, were particularly popular. Overall, the workshop was once again a great success with around 30 participants.
