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| Toyota Enviro Outreach Team 2011 |
A fleet of Toyota vehicles carrying South African and Canadian researchers have set out from South Africa’s premier automotive show, the Johannesburg International Motor Show (JIMS), on Saturday, 8 October 2011 on a two week expedition to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park to document more of the country’s unknown animal and plant species.
With eight recently upgraded Hilux and Fortuner vehicles in support the scientists will do research in the area, listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site in December 1999, until 17 October before returning to the University of Johannesburg in Gauteng.
The iSimangaliso Wetland Park (meaning miracle and wonder) is South Africa's third largest Park (332 000 hectare) and extends from Maphelane (Cape St. Lucia) in the South, to Kosi Bay in the North.
It contains three major lake systems, eight interlinking ecosystems, 700 year old fishing traditions, most of South Africa’s remaining swamp forests, Africa’s largest estuarine system, and 25 000 year-old coastal dunes – among the highest in the world.
The goal of the expedition is to collect specimens from a broad range of taxa and to produce DNA barcode records for all of them. These barcode sequences will upload to the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), an online informatics platform where they will become part of a growing reference library of DNA barcodes for South African plants and animals that are freely available for use by the broader scientific and amateur naturalist communities.
All voucher specimens will be deposited in major national collections where they will be available for examination and in-depth analyses by researchers. The project will also expand the electronic information base on South African biodiversity and facilitate the growth of the National Collecting Programme.
“The importance of South Africa to the iBOL initiative cannot be overstated,” said Paul Hebert, the Scientific Director of the iBOL Consortium. “From the iBOL perspective, it is the ideal combination – a country with vast biodiversity and a community of skilled scientists dedicated to the application of DNA barcoding in species identification.
“We are immensely grateful to the Toyota Enviro Outreach initiative for its assistance in ensuring that South Africa achieves its barcoding targets,” he added.
Calvyn Hamman, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Toyota South Africa Motors, said Toyota’s support for the Enviro Outreach and the IBOL initiative is further proof of the motor company’s commitment towards ensuring a sustainable future.
“By supporting this project to DNA barcode all species we can contribute towards the sustainability and protection of our vast biodiversity. This is crucial to ensure the sustainability of our environment and falls in line with one of Toyota’s core values – sustainable mobility. We wish the Enviro Outreach team well on their endeavours,” he said.
Additional note to Editors:
The International Barcode of Life (iBOL) project is a Canadian-led research alliance, which spans 26 countries and brings together hundreds of leading scientists in the task of collecting specimens, obtaining their DNA barcode records and building an informatics platform to store and share the information for use in species identification and discovery. By 2015, iBOL participants will gather DNA barcode records for five million specimens representing 500,000 species, delivering a highly effective identification system for species commonly encountered by humanity and laying the foundation for subsequent progress towards a barcode reference library for all life.
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