Project title
Workspace for New South Wales Plant Tree of Life (NSWPToL) project.
Collaborators and funding
Collaborators:
- Plant Discovery and Evolution Research
- Collections management teams at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney
- Professor Simon Ho, The University of Sydney
Funding: Botanic Gardens of Sydney; Friends of the Gardens
Contact(s)
- Hervé Sauquet (Head Plant Discovery & Evolution Research), Botanic Gardens of Sydney, herve.sauquet@botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au
- Russell L Barrett (NSWPToL coordinator & Senior Research Scientist), Botanic Gardens of Sydney, russell.barrett@botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au
- Trevor C Wilson, Botanic Gardens of Sydney (Senior Research Scientist), trevor.c.wilson@botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au
- Francis Nge, Botanic Gardens of Sydney (Systematic Botanist), francis.nge@botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au
Project description and aims
The New South Wales Plant Tree of Life (NSWPToL) project is a collaboration between the Plant Discovery and Evolution and Collection management teams at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.
We aim to use the Angiosperms353 target capture methodology to sequence every native flowering plant in New South Wales (NSW) during stage one of our Phylogenomic Flagship project (about 7000 species and subspecies). Ultimately, we hope to sample from multiple specimens of all species. As our herbarium has the best representation of the NSW flora anywhere in the world, we are the best-placed organisation to deliver this critical project. Plant classifications based on evolutionary relationships underpin our valuable herbarium collection (> 350 million AUD), including their physical order and management. This project will serve not only our own organisational needs such as for curation and research in systematics and taxonomy, but also workers in the broader fields of ecology, conservation and evolution. The NSWPToL therefore represents a fundamental unit of knowledge for current and future scientific research at a global scale.
How is ABLeS supporting this work?
This work is supported through the reference data asset creation scheme provided by ABLeS. The support includes 3 TB long term storage, 2 TB temoprary storage on scratch and 100 KSUs per quarter.
Expected outputs enabled by participation in ABLeS
A phylogenomic Angiosperms353 nuclear gene dataset for all 7000 plant species (and infrataxa) of NSW. Assembly, alignments, and trees constructed from this dataset will be used to construct the NSWPToL. Important milestones and outputs includes:
1) pilot and proof of concept: The Australian Botanic Gardens Mount Annan Tree of Life;
2) phylogenomic compendium for all species described on PlantNET (e.g., a state recognised phylogenetic dataset for identification purposes);
3) publication of the NSWPToL;
4) multiple publications identifying systematics of NSW groups and taxonomic changes supported by the NSWPToL;
5) public outreach talks, science seminars, and national and international conference communications. All new genomic DNA sequence data generated by the NSWPToL will eventually be released publicly to international genomic repositories (e.g., European Nucleotide Archive) and legacy web portals (e.g., Kew Tree of Life Explorer).
These details have been provided by project members at project initiation. For more information on the project, please consult the contact(s) or project links above.