Project title
Australian Avian Genomics Initiative
Collaborators and funding
Funding led by Bioplatforms Australia, additional funding and collaboration from the Australian research community.
Contact(s)
- Sophie Mazard, Bioplatforms Australia, smazard@bioplatforms.com
- Anna Kearns, CSIRO, Anna.Kearns@csiro.au
Project description and aims
Australia is home to approximately 830 species of birds, of which 43% are endemics found nowhere else. Despite substantial international efforts in avian genomics and phylogenomics, significant gaps remain in reference data for Australian bird species. An audit of existing data found 687 reference genomes for Australian birds. Out of the 107 families of birds found in Australia, 41 families of native or endemic birds lack Australian representative reference genomes. Filling these gaps in referential data would significantly enhance our understanding of genomics, ecology, and behaviour for species and functional traits unique to Australia.
The Australian Avian Genomics Initiative, established in 2023, aims to:
- Build genomic data for bird conservation: develop data on phylogenomics, reference genomes, and population genetics to support the understanding and conservation of Australia’s unique bird species.
- Advance fundamental bird genomics research: explore key species traits relevant to Australia, including migration, nectarivory, drought tolerance, cooperative breeding, and more.
- Address critical biodiversity needs: use genomics to complement fundamental research and meet the needs identified by society, government, and industry.”
How is ABLeS supporting this work?
This project is supported by the Reference Data Generation scheme provided by ABLeS, providing access to compute and storage resources at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre.
Expected outputs enabled by participation in ABLeS
Datasets (Umbrella Bioproject ID: PRJNA1098052, https://data.bioplatforms.com/organization/aus-avian) publications (https://doi.org/10.25953/740m-0320).
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.