Fig 1.
Biomonitoring training programs and examples from case studies.
Top: the location and setup of the Green Lab, a molecular genomics field laboratory in southeastern Peru. Middle: portable PCR devices analyzing locally collected specimens, including a bat and its ectoparasite, a saddleback tamarin primate, and a butterfly, which were photographed in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. Bottom: imaging of amplicons during agarose gel electrophoresis using smartphones, loading of a flowcell with a field-prepped library onto ONT’s MinION portable sequencer, and the output from WIMP [13] of the phylogenetic analysis of the fecal microbiome analyzed during a field training program conducted at the Green Lab. Data for Fig 1 are provided in S1 Data. ONT, Oxford Nanopore Technologies; WIMP, What’s in my Pot?. Image Credit: Bat: Ishaan Raghunandan; Tamarin: Timothy Paine; Arthropod ectoparasites, butterfly, and laboratory images: Aaron Pomerantz.
Fig 2.
Demographics of attendees of conservation genomics training programs (n = 25) hosted at the Green Lab in southeastern Peru in 2018 and 2019.
(A) Participants by nationality. (B) Participants by the highest degree received. Note: a licenciatura is more advanced than a Bachelor’s degree in Peru and possibly a Master’s thesis equivalent. (C) Prior laboratory experience of participants. (D) Occupation of each participant at the time of attending the training program.
Table 1.
Overview of common genetic approaches used in biodiversity research and their advantages and disadvantages for field-based education.