- 
36C3 preroll music 
- 
Angel: Right now I'd like to welcome our
 first speaker on stage. The talk will be
 
- 
about protecting the wild and I'll hand
 over to her. Please give her a warm round
 
- 
of applause. 
- 
Applause 
- 
Jutta Buschbom: Thank you very much for
 the introduction. My name is Jutta
 
- 
Buschbom, I'm an evolutionary biologist.
 That is my background. I did do my PHD at
 
- 
the University of Chicago working on
 little fungees that live in symbiosis with
 
- 
algae and form colorful rocks, colorful
 crust on rocks. I then did a Postdoc in
 
- 
bioinformatics and after that moved back
 into organismal biology, working in forest
 
- 
genetics. And the ten years I worked in
 forest genetics for the first time I
 
- 
encountered questions that were with
 regard to application, and I found out
 
- 
that actually moving from research to
 application is not trivial. So what I'm
 
- 
going to present is a high tech way using
 genomic data to protect biodiversity in a
 
- 
way that you can actually reach
 application and use conservation genomic
 
- 
tools. So this summer the draft of the
 report of the Intergovernmental Science
 
- 
Policy Panel for Biodiversity and
 Ecosystem Services came out and its
 
- 
results were quite warning. It stated that
 around a million animal and plant species
 
- 
are currently stated and of those...half
 of those species are already dead species
 
- 
walking. So because due to the destruction
 of the habitats or habitat deterioration,
 
- 
they are not able to reproduce in a
 sustainable way anymore. A third of the
 
- 
total species extinction rate risk to date
 has arisen in the last 25 years. And just
 
- 
to give you an idea about the relation we
 are talking about...currently the rate of
 
- 
extinction risk is already at least ten to
 hundreds times higher than it has averaged
 
- 
over the past 10 million years. And within
 these 10 million years there were the Ice
 
- 
Ages, for example. And most of the
 extinction risk is due to the fact of land
 
- 
and sea use change. The report also talks,
 even talks about that we already seem to
 
- 
have transgressed a proposed precautionary
 planetary boundary, which means within the
 
- 
boundary we have a stable biological
 system. But having transgressed it, we
 
- 
might already be in a transition to a new
 state that we have no way to find out how
 
- 
this state is going to look like. So all
 of these facts that the report is stating
 
- 
are actually pretty negative. And I was
 quite happy to read that they also present
 
- 
that there are actually people who do
 better than most of us. And they point out
 
- 
that many practices of indigenous people
 and local communities actually conserve
 
- 
and sustain wild and domesticated
 biodiversity quite well. Today, a higher
 
- 
proportion of the remaining terrestrial
 biodiversity lies in areas managed and
 
- 
held by indigenous people. And these
 ecosystems are more intact and less
 
- 
declining, less rapidly declining. So we
 have examples of lifestyles that actually
 
- 
do better than most of us. And I know the
 solutions won't be simple and it won't be
 
- 
easy to get there but we can look to what
 these people do better than we do. All of
 
- 
this sounds...it's a global report and it
 sounds kind of like far away, like
 
- 
probably somewhere in the tropics, but
 actually threats to biodiversity happen
 
- 
also directly in front of our own front
 doors. This summer a paper came out from
 
- 
two colleagues from the University of
 Greifswald, who had analyzed the long term
 
- 
data set about leaf beetles. And they were
 asking if we already have a decline of
 
- 
leaf beetles in Central Europe. So they
 compiled long term data sets of leaf
 
- 
beetle observations for Central Europe,
 starting from 1900 now to 2017, so
 
- 
spanning a hundred and twenty years. And
 what they find is that systematic reports
 
- 
on leaf beetles and leaf beetle
 observations are increasing during this
 
- 
time interval, time span. But despite the
 fact that we have...like in the last two
 
- 
decades, we had very high numbers of
 reports and observations for leaf beetles,
 
- 
the number of species, the orange line, is
 declining. It's slightly declining. But
 
- 
the question is, is this real or not? And
 what was most worrisome to the authors is
 
- 
that in the data set, the number of
 species here in orange that were having
 
- 
more reports was declining, while the
 number of species that showed less reports
 
- 
than before is expanding. So this kind of
 long term datasets are very hard to
 
- 
interpret and many factors can contribute
 to those patterns. And it's not clear if
 
- 
this pattern is statistically significant.
 But if you take a step back and consider
 
- 
your background knowledge, your prior
 knowledge about the state of the world, do
 
- 
you say, like, how does the current state
 look like? Does it look good or rather
 
- 
worrisome? And then with that knowledge,
 tell me that these results are an
 
- 
artifact or a bias. I'm worried that once
 we have statistical significant signal in
 
- 
this dataset, it will be already too late.
 So right now, I've been talking about leaf
 
- 
beetles and beetles are the largest group
 within insects with about 400.000 species.
 
- 
Leaf beetles are a large family of about
 50.000 species which are worldwide
 
- 
distributed. And here in Germany, we have
 over 470 leaf beetle species. So how do we
 
- 
actually know how many species there are
 and who actually counted all these
 
- 
species? And is that just a task of
 taxonomists. Taxonomy is the science of
 
- 
naming and defining, including
 circumscribing and classifying groups of
 
- 
biological organisms on the basis of
 shared characters. So one could have the
 
- 
picture of some woman with a funny hat
 running over a meadow catching like
 
- 
butterflies or some guy mushroom hunter
 crawling through the forest trying to find
 
- 
mushrooms. And it's true, as biodiversity
 scientists we spent a lot of time outdoors
 
- 
and yeah...on the other hand, biotaxonomy
 is a high-tech science today. So
 
- 
taxonomists actually take up new
 technological tools and developments to
 
- 
help them identify and describe,
 understand the species. So taxonomists
 
- 
actually are often experts in, for
 example, microscopy, mathematics,
 
- 
biochemistry, even proteomics and
 genomics. So throughout the talk, I'm
 
- 
going to compile this list of people and
 experts we're going to need to protect
 
- 
biodiversity if we want to do this on the
 basis of genetic data. Right now, the list
 
- 
is quite empty. The first entry is a
 taxonomists, but that will change quickly
 
- 
and taxonomists are a subgroup of
 evolutionary biologists mostly. So I told
 
- 
you as taxonomists and biodiversity
 scientists take up technology and...so as
 
- 
soon as computers came about and the
 internet started people started to use
 
- 
that to compile information about species,
 and today we have several global resources
 
- 
available at the species level and above
 the species level. So we biodiversity
 
- 
scientists were among the first who
 defined biodiversity information
 
- 
standards. We have a global catalog of
 life. A list of all named species. The
 
- 
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
 has an aim to bring together information
 
- 
from different sources and they are
 compiling, producing this wonderful map.
 
- 
This is leaf beetles, all the records
 about leaf beetles that we have in the
 
- 
world. And it looks like as if leaf
 beetles are highly associated with third
 
- 
world economics. However that clearly is
 an artifact and it just shows that we need
 
- 
many more taxonomists and biodiversity
 scientists all over the world to find and
 
- 
identify leaf beetles. So we also need
 biodiversity informaticians to help us
 
- 
compile global lists and distribute
 knowledge. So far I have been talking
 
- 
about species which is a simplification.
 The question is what is...what are species
 
- 
actually? And so we need to talk about
 genetic diversity within and between
 
- 
species. And I'm going to do so using
 gulls, which most of us might know. Here
 
- 
in Europe, we have two large gulls of the
 genus Larus. One is in the front, the
 
- 
lighter gray is our Silbermöwe. And in the
 back is our Heringsmöwe, the dark one. And
 
- 
I'm going to use German names because the
 English names go crosswise and that's
 
- 
completely confusing. So I will stick with
 the German names. Here in Europe these two
 
- 
species seem to be really fine species
 because they barely interbreed, so they
 
- 
don't hybridize. However, if you take a
 step back and look at the genus in
 
- 
general, you see that the species of the
 genus are distributed kind of ringwise
 
- 
around the Arctic. And so the idea is
 that, say during the Ice Age, all of this
 
- 
area was glaciated and the gulls retreated
 to a refuge here near the Caspian Sea. And
 
- 
then after the ice retreated, the gulls
 moved back north. One branch moved into
 
- 
Europe forming our Heringsmöwe and
 another branch then moved counterclockwise
 
- 
around the Arctic, producing different
 morphotypes, different species across the
 
- 
Bering Strait and then into North America.
 There the dark blue one is...I'm
 
- 
simplifying, the equivalent of our
 European Silbermöwe, the American
 
- 
Silbermöwe. Then the idea is that some
 individuals crossed back to Europe and
 
- 
formed our European Silbermöwe. And while
 all of these species here are
 
- 
interbreeding, so they hybridize. Only
 when this ring is closed those two species
 
- 
don't interbreed anymore. And the big
 question is, are we actually dealing with
 
- 
one single species or are we dealing with
 different species that just happened to
 
- 
hybridize more or less? The question is
 not trivial because it has consequences
 
- 
for protection. If we are dealing with one
 single species, all the gulls in Eurasia
 
- 
could go extinct and it wouldn't matter
 because we still would have the gulls in
 
- 
North America. However, if we have
 different species in all of these areas,
 
- 
we would need to protect individuals or
 the species on a regional level and
 
- 
protect all of these different species. So
 to investigate this question about: Do we
 
- 
have different species? And what were the
 evolutionary processes and histories that
 
- 
brought about the species? A group of
 scientists investigated that using DNA
 
- 
sequences. And on the left, you have the
 model, the theoretical model of the ring
 
- 
species. And here on the right you have
 reality. And the scientists found that the
 
- 
reality is always much more complex. So,
 for example, they found two refuges or
 
- 
they proposed two refuges. But what they
 found was that genetic diversity was
 
- 
correlated with those species or
 morphotypes. So what that also means is
 
- 
that genetic diversity is cultivated with
 geographic origin. What we learn from this
 
- 
type of analysis is we learn about
 evolutionary processes and history, about
 
- 
variability and differentiation of our
 gene flow and migration, about speciation
 
- 
processes. That we all need to understand
 our species, which will allow us to
 
- 
protect them. So we need evolutionary
 biologists who do follow genetics and
 
- 
population genetics. So once we found out
 that one can use genetic diversity, to
 
- 
infer geographic origin because genetic
 diversity is correlated with geography,
 
- 
people immediately said: 'Okay, we can use
 it for conservation applications.'. And
 
- 
it's also...we learned that we...often it
 is unclear what is a species, species
 
- 
boundaries are unclear and some species
 have huge distribution ranges with
 
- 
different clusters of viability within
 this huge range. So we know that we need
 
- 
to protect within species genetic
 diversity, which means that we need to
 
- 
understand within species population
 structure and we need to build useful and
 
- 
reliable models of population structure.
 These models are actually required for all
 
- 
of our applications. They are required for
 monitoring, for example, for conservation
 
- 
strategies, for functional adaptation and
 adaptability, questions of productability
 
- 
of different provenances, its impact on
 management regimes, breeding strategies,
 
- 
and also for enforcement applications.
 From the studies I showed you before with
 
- 
the gulls we also know that we need to
 approach the question of a population
 
- 
structure on a distribution range wide
 scale. So here's the map produced by
 
- 
EUFORGENE, the European Network for forest
 reproductive material for one of our
 
- 
native oaks, the sessil oak. And the dots
 are the sites for genetic conservation
 
- 
units. And so that is one strategy how to
 represent within species genetic diversity
 
- 
and how to sample it. And you can see this
 is a hypothetical example, but we likely
 
- 
will see a gradient from west to east or
 might see one at this scale. Then once we
 
- 
have these kind of global data sets, we
 can go to the fine scale and maybe, for
 
- 
example, do a national genetic monitoring.
 And we will find much finer scale
 
- 
gradients. We also will find especially
 for first trace outliers, so for stands
 
- 
that don't fit the usual pattern. And that
 is because the first reproductive material
 
- 
has been moved around a lot. And so these
 lighter or darker dots is material that
 
- 
was moved to Germany from the outside. And
 we only will identify these outliers if we
 
- 
have the whole reference dataset. If we
 don't have the whole reference dataset, we
 
- 
might not identify these outliers - stands
 with a different history. Or in a worst
 
- 
case, these outliers might actually bias
 our gradients. And we are always talking
 
- 
about very slight gradients. So it's easy
 to bias these gradiants, dilute them, so
 
- 
we actually won't get the results we need.
 To compile these kinds of reference
 
- 
datasets that's huge collaborative efforts
 because people need to go out into the
 
- 
field and collect the reference samples
 and that might be scientists, that might
 
- 
be people from local communities, citizen
 scientists, managers, owners, government
 
- 
officials who provide background
 information, maps, distribution
 
- 
information and also in many parts of the
 world might protect the people who are
 
- 
actually collecting the samples. And it
 might be conservation activists and NGOs.
 
- 
So once the samples have been collected
 they need to be stored somewhere for the
 
- 
long term and the information needs to be
 databased. And that is the work of
 
- 
scientific connections, which are mostly
 at natural history museums and there the
 
- 
samples are processed. They're organized
 in ways that you can find them again. All
 
- 
the metadata is entered, which curators
 do, collection managers, preparators,
 
- 
technical staff at the scientific
 collections. So once we have these kind of
 
- 
data sets, large scale data sets, what are
 we actually doing with them? So the
 
- 
foundation for all of our applications is
 population structure and there
 
- 
specifically population assignment. So the
 process is set first. We decide on a
 
- 
question and design our project
 accordingly that we can answer the
 
- 
question. Then we need to infer the
 population structure model and optimize
 
- 
it. In the next step we need to check if a
 model actually is good enough for
 
- 
application because we might have found
 the best model, but it might still not be
 
- 
good enough for application. So we need to
 test that. And that is the step of
 
- 
population assignment or predictive
 assignment. And then in the end, we want
 
- 
to test our hypothesis. Are the two stands
 different or does an individual come from
 
- 
stand A or from stand B? And here we
 identify error rates and accuracy. So this
 
- 
whole process is very statistical. And so
 the analysis of these reference data they
 
- 
need to be accompanied by biostatisticians
 who can tell us how to analyze our data.
 
- 
So what is the state-of-the-art right now?
 What kind of geographic resolution do we
 
- 
actually get of this non model specie
 currently? And I'm going to present the
 
- 
example of an African timber tree
 species, which is a very valuable timber.
 
- 
It's one example but basically all results
 for species who have large distribution
 
- 
ranges and are continuously distributed
 and are also long-lived, are very similar.
 
- 
So this kind of results seem to be species
 independent. So the species are Milica
 
- 
regia and excelsa, African teak, which
 cannot be grown in plantations for timber
 
- 
quality. So it is harvested unsustainably
 from natural forests. It's distributed in
 
- 
West, Central and East Africa. Here's a
 black rectangle. And a group of a dozen
 
- 
scientists got together and they actually
 sampled a reference dataset for these two
 
- 
species. It's about over 400 samples, they
 analyzed four marker systems, resulting in
 
- 
a total of something like 100 markers,
 genetic markers, and then they optimized
 
- 
the population model and used different
 parameter settings. And we're going to
 
- 
concentrate here on the best solution that
 they found. And basically this rectangle
 
- 
here is the black one over here. So the
 resolution is... they found population
 
- 
structure with clear clusters. So the
 populations and the species from West
 
- 
Africa can be distinguished from those
 populations in Central Africa. And the
 
- 
ones in East Africa can be differentiated.
 So that is really good. So we have
 
- 
population structure. We know their
 signal. The problem is still that our
 
- 
resolution is much lower than we would
 need to have it because we basically need
 
- 
resolution at least on a country level,
 because most of the laws are national. So
 
- 
it might be legal to harvest a tree in one
 country, but not in another country. So we
 
- 
need to get our resolution down to country
 level or even to regional level. If you
 
- 
want to distinguish, was the tree
 harvested in a national park in a
 
- 
protected area or outside in a managed
 forest. And when as biodiversity
 
- 
scientists, we don't know how to continue,
 one thing is to look for what people do
 
- 
with model organisms and specifically what
 people do in human population genomics
 
- 
because there thousands of populations
 geneticists are working and there is a
 
- 
completely different funding background
 due to the interest of the medical and the
 
- 
pharma industry. So they are always
 advanced. What we can learn from there,
 
- 
from the human populations genomics is
 that we need two features. One is we
 
- 
already know that we need distribution
 wide sampling, which provides a spatial
 
- 
context. The second feature is that we
 need genome wide sequencing, preferably
 
- 
genome sequencing, which provides us steps
 in time because our genomes are archives
 
- 
of our evolutionary history. They are
 records of all the processes and events
 
- 
and these steps in time then translate
 also into resolution. Once we have these
 
- 
two features, actually these reference
 datasets open Pandora's box. Suddently we
 
- 
can ask all kinds of questions and
 objectives, even those that we still don't
 
- 
know. We can develop all kinds of
 applications which is done for humans.
 
- 
Currently, there are at least four global
 datasets on human diversity. These are
 
- 
very widely reused and these big datasets
 - so they are big data with regard to the
 
- 
number of samples and also the genomes or
 the genome representations and this
 
- 
results in very information rich data
 which initiates analytical development so
 
- 
people continuously are developing new
 statistical methods. And right now, a new
 
- 
wave is coming in of these methods. So
 once you have these global datasets,
 
- 
people start in human populations
 genomics, started to do these intense
 
- 
regional samplings. And this is the
 example of the United Kingdom Biobank.
 
- 
It's a project with 500.000 volunteers,
 they are all UK citizens from all over the
 
- 
islands. And each individual was genotyped
 in a vet lab for 820.000 markers. That's
 
- 
completely I mean, that's a different
 number than the 100 or 1000...in
 
- 
biodiversity scientists we normally
 analyse a maximum of a couple of 10.000
 
- 
markers. So that's a completely different
 number. But then statistical geneticists
 
- 
come. They do some weird and wonderful
 voodoo and they derive 96 million markers
 
- 
per genome that is per individual from
 these 820.000 markers that were produced
 
- 
in the lab. So that's a hundred fold
 increase. And once you have this kind of
 
- 
dataset for a genome, you suddenly or you
 finally become country level and within
 
- 
country level resolution. So these panels
 are examples. So the first panel shows
 
- 
individuals who were born in Edinburgh and
 the question was "Where were people born
 
- 
who had a similar ancestral background,
 genetic background?". And what they found
 
- 
was that was all over Scotland and
 Northern Ireland. Northern Yorkshire was
 
- 
even more local. So people from Yorkshire
 don't seem to get around a lot. For London
 
- 
the situation is completely different.
 That is what we would expect because
 
- 
London is a people magnet. People move
 there all the time. They meet there, they
 
- 
get children and the kids born in London,
 their genetic ancestry has nothing to do
 
- 
with London. It's from all over the place,
 from the British Isles and the world. So
 
- 
that's why the colors are strongly
 dissolved. So this study came out also
 
- 
this summer. And it's the first time that
 I have seen that we actually really can
 
- 
achieve regional resolution. And I find
 this possibility for biodiversity science
 
- 
really exciting. So it was made possible
 by very sophisticated statistical
 
- 
approaches which are able to analyze
 genetic data from highly complex
 
- 
evolutionary and ecological systems. And
 at the same time these analyses are able
 
- 
to handle big data. We we're talking about
 gigabytes and terabytes of data and
 
- 
results. So a statistical geneticist are
 developing new methods of data
 
- 
representation to handle this amount of
 data. And then we are able to sufficiently
 
- 
extract the signal for a very specific
 question from data which are very low
 
- 
signal to noise ratio. So to get there, we
 need many experts and specialists. So we
 
- 
need statistical geneticists, big data
 experts who also might contribute machine
 
- 
learning expertise. We need molecular
 biologists who know how to sequence
 
- 
complex genomes. We now need
 bioinformatics with an expertise in
 
- 
genomics for assembly, annotation and
 alignment of genomic sequences. The result
 
- 
is actually this: This is the author list
 for the thousands genomes project
 
- 
reference data set, and I don't expect you
 to be able to read it, but the bold type
 
- 
is of interest because it shows all the
 different tasks that are necessary to
 
- 
produce a standardized and highly cleaned
 reverence dataset. So the whole author
 
- 
list is something like 1.5 pages long and
 even considering that some authors will
 
- 
have contributed to several tasks. The
 publications for reference datasets mostly
 
- 
have author lists that are far over 50
 people. So they are huge collaborative
 
- 
efforts. Now we take the step into
 biodiversity science. Here these are eight
 
- 
gastrotrichs, they are little worm like...
 organisms who live in the sediments of
 
- 
freshwater lakes and marine sediment. They
 are in general a couple of hundreds micro
 
- 
meters large. And I don't have any
 numbers, but my guess would be that maybe
 
- 
worldwide, a hundred to a thousand people
 actually work on these species. There are
 
- 
800 species of gastrotrichs. So let's say
 there's one, two, maybe three experts per
 
- 
species for these organisms. So how are
 these three people going to manage all
 
- 
these tasks to produce a reference
 dataset? You might say, well, it's
 
- 
gastrotrichs, I mean, have never heard
 about them. Maybe they are not so
 
- 
important. Maybe you don't need a
 reference data sets, but actually some of
 
- 
those species are bioindicators for water
 quality. So what we observe right now is a
 
- 
gap for biodiversity conservation. In
 model organisms, we have Pandora's Box
 
- 
open. We have all the statistical analyses
 at our hands to analyze our data sets.
 
- 
However, in none model organisms, we are
 still stuck with summary statistics that
 
- 
don't provide us the resolution that we
 need. And we know that to close this gap,
 
- 
even for a single species, it's a huge
 effort. But at the same time, we have over
 
- 
35.000 species listed by scientists which
 need already now effective protection. So
 
- 
we need to find a way to close this gap
 and actually move in this direction. And
 
- 
the good thing is, so all of this... in
 biodiversity science, in academia, and we
 
- 
need to make the transition over the
 conservational genomic gap into the big
 
- 
loop of real world conservation tasks. And
 the good thing is we already know what we
 
- 
have to do. So we need to have reference
 data sets, distribution range wide. We
 
- 
need to have statistics. And it's going to
 be big data. So we need collection
 
- 
management, data management and an
 analysis environment. So looking at
 
- 
different ingredients or different steps
 the first we need is a general data
 
- 
infrastructure for global diversity of
 reference data sets that actually can be
 
- 
used across species for preferably as many
 species as possible and provide a working
 
- 
environment for biodiversity scientists
 and experts. It should be user friendly so
 
- 
it can be used by scientists, but also
 that people from local communities and
 
- 
citizen scientists can add their
 observation data and their data into this
 
- 
data infrastructure. I have listed quite a
 lot of features that these kind of
 
- 
infrastructures should have. And I'm going
 to argue that these features are not some
 
- 
nice to have, but actually some must have.
 Because our goal is always application. So
 
- 
we need developers, managers and curators
 for data infrastructures. Since our goal
 
- 
is application, our main features are
 quality control and error reduction. These
 
- 
are the basis. So that our conservation
 tools can be robustly and reliably applied
 
- 
under real world operating conditions. And
 the way to achieve quality and error
 
- 
reduction is through chains of custody. So
 it means that from project of sign, from
 
- 
the questions through all the steps that
 are necessary to produce a reference data
 
- 
set and then...so from sample collection,
 genomic statistical analysis down to
 
- 
application. These steps need to be
 documented and standardized. They need to
 
- 
be, each one of them needs to be validated
 and reproducible. They should be modular
 
- 
so they can be user friendly. And the
 whole chain of custody needs to be
 
- 
scalable. So if our chains of custody have
 these characteristics, we actually will
 
- 
have tools that will work in everyday
 life. So we need professional developers
 
- 
and programmers who are able to produce
 these very collaborative softwares. We
 
- 
need free and open source experts. So we
 always can ensure that our code and that
 
- 
our infrastructures are still integer and
 we can check them. And I'm a biologist, I
 
- 
don't have any background in hardware, but
 I've heard a couple of talks here in the
 
- 
conference about Green IT. And I have
 the feeling we should have people who know
 
- 
hardware and software and know how to
 develop these high tech tools in a way
 
- 
sustainable so that by developing these
 tools, we don't use more resources than we
 
- 
are trying to protect. So I've shown all
 these features and characteristics that
 
- 
the software should have. And I'm arguing
 that these features are necessary because
 
- 
of the reality we find us in. It is one of
 rising over-exploitation and destruction
 
- 
of nature. So the extent of environmental
 crimes is up in the billions. All
 
- 
environmental crime together, the green
 bubbles are only second to drug associated
 
- 
crimes. They are up there with
 counterfeiting or human trafficing. So
 
- 
these are multi-billion enterprises. They
 are often transnational and industries
 
- 
with huge profits. So if there's some
 crime, some mafia boss, some criminal
 
- 
manager who just bribed a government
 official somewhere in the neck in the
 
- 
woods, it just would make sense that that
 person would not wait or not take the
 
- 
risks to be discovered just because some
 customs officer pulls out a container
 
- 
somewhere in the harbor, for example,
 opens it and says "This looks kind of
 
- 
weird. Let's take a sample, send it to a
 lab." and then a population geneticist
 
- 
comes back and says "Oh, yes, this sample
 is not from area A as documented, but
 
- 
actually it's from area B and it was
 illegally logged." If we have reference
 
- 
data sets, information rich reference data
 sets, they become highly valuable and they
 
- 
need protection themselves against
 manipulation and destruction. So we will
 
- 
need to think about IT security from the
 beginning. Also, these data sets are often
 
- 
very politically sensitive because if it
 is shown that in a certain country there
 
- 
is the illegal logging repeatedly, that
 country might not be too excited about
 
- 
this information. So we need to think
 about IT security experts. So my hope is
 
- 
that these kind of very high tech digital
 conservation tools can actually contribute
 
- 
to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals
 by empowering indigenous people, local
 
- 
communities and also us to protect and
 force and sustainably use our lands and
 
- 
our biodiversity by providing some
 management and law enforcement tools. So
 
- 
we need people from around the world,
 users from around the world who use these
 
- 
tools and help to develop them further and
 to maintain them. And finally here, these
 
- 
high tech tools will just another
 technological fix. If we don't manage to
 
- 
get our back down, our way of life down to
 sustainable levels. So what we need is to
 
- 
today...this year, the Earth Overshoot Day
 was at the end of July. So at the end of
 
- 
July, we had used all the resources that
 we had available for the whole year. And
 
- 
we need to get this back to the end of the
 year so that our resources actually
 
- 
sustain us for the whole year. The graphic
 here for Germany suggests that we are on a
 
- 
good way. We are reducing our resource
 consumption and maybe even our biocapacity
 
- 
moves up a little bit. So actually it
 seems that our personal lifestyles and
 
- 
choices make a difference and we just need
 to close this gap here much quicker. So
 
- 
protecting biodiversity needs all of us to
 achieve that. And with that, thank you
 
- 
very much. 
- 
Applause 
- 
Angel: So thank you Jutta for this very
 interesting talk and the very valuable
 
- 
work you're doing. We have three mics
 here. Please line up at the microphones if
 
- 
you have any questions or suggestions or
 want to participate and work together with
 
- 
Jutta. We have one question from the
 Internet, so please Signal-Angel start.
 
- 
Signal-Angel: Why do wild plant species
 within a genus are further apart than wild
 
- 
animal species within a genus?
 Angel: Could you repeat it, please?
 
- 
Signal-Angel: Why do wild plant species
 within a genus are further apart than wild
 
- 
animal species within a genus?
 Jutta: I'm not sure I understand the
 
- 
background for the question.
 Mic 1: Because animals move and plants
 
- 
don't move.
 Jutta: Oh, okay. If that is the idea
 
- 
behind the question. Plants actually move,
 too. They don't move as individuals, but
 
- 
they move their genetic material through
 pollen or fragments. So actually diversity
 
- 
in plants and in animals can be quite
 similar. So the idea is that plants are
 
- 
just stuck and should have a completely
 different population structure does not
 
- 
hold because plants move around their
 genetic material through seeds, through
 
- 
pollen, through vegetative propagules.
 Angel: So thank you microphone 1 for
 
- 
helping out. Please ask your question. Mic
 1: So my question is about the success
 
- 
factor of it. If you think of this,
 whatever database being set up there and I
 
- 
think it's gonna be a huge database...I
 downloaded my own genome on the Internet.
 
- 
It was about 150 megabytes. And if we
 multiply that, I think the genetic
 
- 
variation from one person to another is
 about 1 percent only. So we can compress
 
- 
that to 4 megabytes per person. If we
 sequence all the humans in the world, that
 
- 
would be 32 petabytes, that would cost
 approximately 15 billion dollars. And
 
- 
that's only for the storage. Now comes the
 entire management. Of course, we don't
 
- 
want to digitize all the human genome, but
 rather the plants and animal species
 
- 
genome. So it's a huge data program. And
 what would be for you the success factors
 
- 
for this thing to really fly? And did you
 talk to organizations like WikiData or
 
- 
others or where would it ideally be
 hosted? At a university or an
 
- 
international nonprofit or who would be
 running the thing?
 
- 
Jutta: Yeah, I mean, it's just really big
 data. I think our first goal is not to
 
- 
think about having all predicted 5 to 10
 million species be sequenced on a
 
- 
population level. I think we need to think
 about the next step. And there it would
 
- 
make sense to start with species that are
 actually highly exploited, like many
 
- 
timber species and also many marine
 fishes. I think that's where we should
 
- 
start. And to host this kind of data I
 think it should be in political
 
- 
independent hands. So it should be with an
 NGO or with the U.N., some organization
 
- 
that is independent.
 Mic 1: Are you the first to think about
 
- 
this or are there existing initiatives?
 Jutta: There are actually existing
 
- 
initiatives. I have been in contact with
 the Forest Stewardship Council and they
 
- 
are actually starting to sample their
 concessions and initiated to build up the
 
- 
samples, they work together with Kew
 Botanical Gardens and the U.S. Forest
 
- 
Service. And right now they're analyzing
 the samples, using isotopes which is
 
- 
another method which is very powerful and
 can also produce geographic information.
 
- 
And so, yeah, so people are moving in this
 way. So, yeah, I think the idea is out
 
- 
there, just we have to start and we have
 to really do it and provide one
 
- 
infrastructure so that we can combine, for
 example, morphological data, isotope data
 
- 
and genomic data into one dataset, which
 will increase our resolution and our
 
- 
reliability.
 Angel: Okay. Microphone number two,
 
- 
please.
 Mic 2: Thank you for your valuable talk.
 
- 
My question would be you'd start your talk
 with the possible decrease of leaf beetles
 
- 
in the data set you showed on slide number
 six there was an increase in leaf beetle
 
- 
population until the 70s, something about
 that. Is there a possible explanation for
 
- 
that?
 Jutta: Yeah, I believe it is, because
 
- 
people started to much more systematically
 observe leaf beetles. So it's a sample
 
- 
effort. And also at that time the people -
 so it's a multi-people collaboration who
 
- 
actually has assembled this dataset so the
 people who are part of this collaboration
 
- 
they edit their own private data sets. And
 that's why you have an increase I think.
 
- 
While the people from the nineteen
 hundreds, nineteen hundred ten you only
 
- 
can use the data that is available in
 publications and samples in museums or in
 
- 
scientific collections. I think that is
 the reason why you have the sharp
 
- 
increase.
 Mic 2: Thank you.
 
- 
Angel: So we have another question of
 microphone number two.
 
- 
Mic 2: Thank you for your fine talking.
 Excuse me. Maybe my question is a bit off
 
- 
topic. Do you think the methods and roles
 that you identified in your talk could be
 
- 
transferred to the assessment of raw
 materials? I'm thinking about metals?
 
- 
Jutta: Maybe the data infrastructure, like
 if you wanted to collect raw metals or
 
- 
materials from all over the world and...a
 sampleized scientific collection and to
 
- 
have kind of a reference dataset that
 might work, actually. But the genomics
 
- 
obviously won't. So that part of what you
 would need to use different methods from
 
- 
physics, obviously. But actually the
 infrastructure, certain parts will be
 
- 
quite similar. I think so, yes.
 Angel: So we have one more question from
 
- 
the Internet.
 Signal-Angel: Who does contract a
 
- 
freelance evolutionary biologist? Can you
 give an example of this kind of work you
 
- 
proposed?
 Jutta: So I see this gap between science
 
- 
and applications, that we need these
 applications and there's a huge potential
 
- 
for these applications. We know that
 illegal logging and that is my background,
 
- 
but doesn't seem to be much different, for
 example, in marine fisheries. We know that
 
- 
there is this huge amount of illegal
 logging and timber trade going on. And we
 
- 
need to have some assets actually that
 have the power to detect illegally traded
 
- 
timber. So I think there is a huge need
 for these kind of methods and
 
- 
organizations who are interested in these
 kind of methods. Our governments, their
 
- 
companies, NGOs, customs, Interpol. So,
 yeah.
 
- 
Angel: Do we have any other questions? So
 thank you again Jutta for your talk and
 
- 
the valuable work you're doing. Please
 give a warm round of applause to Jutta.
 
- 
Applause 
- 
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