A major new project will help benchmark biodiversity change in the Arctic Ocean and guide conservation efforts by identifying unique species and assessing their extinction risk.
Developed by an international team of scientists under the joint leadership of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK and the Alfred-Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI) in Germany, the EcoOmics dataset will also support bioprospecting to tackle the shortage of antibiotics and antiviral medication, as well as reveal evidence of novel biology that might influence our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.
The team - which includes researchers from the German Helmholtz Association, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Joint Genome Institute (JGI, USA) and Earlham Institute (UK), as well as several other institutions - discuss the initiative and preliminary findings in the journal PLOS Biology, published today.
Read more at: University of East Angelia
Scientists working on the MOSAiC ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. (Photo Credit: Marcel Nicolaus / Alfred-Wegener-Institute (AWI))