Off the shores of Guam is one of the most complex marine systems in the United States, home to thousands of organisms – many of which are still being documented and identified to this day. The Guam NSF EPSCoR GECCO Biorepository is part of an on-going effort to understand those organisms as well as their habitats.
What can also be described as a “Library of Life,” the Biorepository is a physical and cyber warehouse that houses specimens and data on organisms from waters throughout Micronesia and beyond. The biological specimens include species from historical collections, such as the 29,0000+ specimen coral collection of the late UOG Emeritus Professor Richard Randall, and organisms from more recent EPSCoR-funded research projects, such as last year’s Bioblitz.
“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is just come up with specimen data that’s world class that a lot of museums don’t have for the organisms in their possession,” said Guam NSF EPSCoR Biorepository Research Associate Dave Burdick. Burdick notes that one of the advantages to the Biorepository on Guam is that the team has easier access to reefs for field collection, compared to other researchers in the United States.
“We have that advantage to be able to dig deeper and better capture that habitat data. That, I think, helps set us apart,” said Burdick. “And even though we’re kind of new and relatively small, I think that could be really powerful for researchers.”
Burdick, along with the rest of the Guam NSF EPSCoR Biorepository team, has been working tirelessly to catalog thousands of specimens for both the physical and online components of the Biorepository. Just the Randall coral collection alone has taken several years of work since that data needed to be transcribed from Randall’s original writing dating back to the 1960s.
The team has been working to upload all of the data from the collections onto an online portal which they hope to have fully updated and ready for public use soon. The physical specimen is given a catalog number, labeled and housed in the EPSCoR Annex in the UOG Dean’s Circle.
“When every specimen has been correctly labeled,” said Abigail Huber, a research associate who joined the team in 2024, “I transport all the jars to the annex and arrange them from family down to genus and sometimes species. We had about 2,000 [recently collected] specimens to go through so this took a long, long, long, time.” These specimens can be loaned out to researchers who may be interested in a specific species to study.
However, there are still many specimens that have yet to be properly identified, including many from the 2024 Bioblitz. Identifying these species is an intensive process which requires the researchers to look through available literature in an attempt to properly name each specimen. Fortunately, the Biorepository has begun a partnership with the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. to identify the specimens through DNA sequencing. Huber, who has been working on both sorting the specimens and sending tissue samples, notes that DNA sequencing will help researchers identify organisms more efficiently.
Being able to identify these organisms and their homes is important for conservation efforts so that communities can better understand how to protect them, as well as help preserve the way of life for people in the region whose cultures depend on the ocean.