Digital Biodiversity: Paul Hebert | Spring 2011
Our planet is home to millions of species, most still unknown despite 250 years of scientific effort.
Resolution of this gap gains new impetus when one recognizes that a mass extinction event, the greates in 65 million years, is underway. Biodiversity science is building a new approach to identification, one based on the analysis of short DNA sequences. This shift from analogue to digital identification systems will transform biodiversity science–where a touch will reveal an organism's identity and all that humanity knows about it. Picture a walk in any forest or along any seashore with life's diversity revealed, on the spot, in an instant.
Paul Hebert
Paul Hebert is the science director of the International Barcode of Life Project, which aims to index and identify forms of life through DNA barcoding. Hebert completed undergraduate work at Queen's University, a PhD in genetics at Cambridge University, and postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Natural History Museum in London. Hebert holds a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity at the University of Guelph an is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
