DNA sequencing to meet global biodiversity goals: Interview with Tyler Kartzinel

Tyler Kartzinel likens protecting biodiversity to enhancing cellphone networks. His analogy is pretty straightforward: look for gaps in coverage, and then do what’s needed to fill them.

“Engineers have figured out how to look for dead zones and enhance coverage,” Kartzinel, associate professor of ecology, evolution and organizational biology at Brown University in the U.S., told Mongabay in a video interview. “They look for where the need is and plug the gaps.”

That, according to Kartzinel, is exactly what scientists need to do when it comes to DNA sequencing technology. In recent years, DNA sampling and analysis technology have advanced rapidly, with scientists using drones and robots to collect samples from the remotest corners of the world. But a common grouse persists: the lack of extensive reference libraries against which scientists can compare samples to identity species.

A study led by Kartzinel and published in the journal Molecular Ecology looks at how reference libraries are faring. While databases were found to cover a quarter of the plant species that the team looked into, they found “coverage gaps in tropical biodiversity hotspots” reflecting “well-documented biases in biodiversity science.” The study found that at least 17% of the plant families they looked into lacked any reference data.

“There’s hundreds of years of power asymmetries and economic inequities that have privileged biodiversity studies in some parts of the world versus others,” Kartzinel said. “In areas which could arguably benefit the most from this technology, we’re actually most limited in the data sets.”

He emphasized the need for scientists in the Global North to engage extensively with people who are making decisions on the ground, from governments to academics, to “figure out research needs and adapt the technology to that need.”

Kartzinel spoke with Mongabay’s Abhishyant Kidangoor about the scope of DNA technology in meeting biodiversity goals, the need to ramp up the work to build more reference databases, and the challenges he anticipates along the way. The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: How would you describe your research to someone who knows nothing about it?

Tyler Kartzinel: What my research group specializes in is using genetic technologies to help inform and advance species conservation around the world. A big part of that strategy requires us to know what species live where, how they’re interacting with each other, who lives with whom, who eats whom, and so on. In order to make that kind of technology work, we need to have very good reference data. That will allow us to know, if we’re looking at a DNA sequence from an area, what that species was and which species did that DNA sequence belong to. We were curious how effectively we could use genetic technologies in different places around the world to do this kind of research with a very common kind of organism: any kind of plant.

We had some idea that it would be much easier and much more accurate in certain parts of the world where there’s a longer history of using these kinds of DNA sequencing technologies. We also know that there might be some kind of mismatch between the centers of biodiversity on the planet and the areas that were most able to use biodiversity technology. That’s exactly what we found.

We found that there are some places in the world where a lot of plant diversity is already covered. But in tropical biodiversity hotspots, we haven’t invested enough yet in building those databases to use the technology effectively. And so, in the areas which could arguably benefit the most from using technology, because there are so many species and it’s so hard to get to these areas, we’re actually most limited in the data sets required to run the technology.

Mongabay: Why is that the case?

Tyler Kartzinel: The history of the field of science is a little bit disaggregated. There are very active research institutes that do a lot of this, but they’re focused on their specific geographies or their taxa. For example, in Canada, almost all plant species have already been entered into these databases. But in other places where there’s less access to the technology or less history of using the technology or less resourcing for it, we find a greater challenge finding all of the plant species because there’s just so much diversity to sift through in the first place.

So in big parts of the Amazon, the Congo Basin and parts of tropical Southeast Asia, we found very entry-level sort of data. Less than 5% of global data comes from those areas when we know that 80% of diversity is concentrated there.

Mongabay: Is there a specific example of something that surprised you?

Tyler Kartzinel: One of the things that surprised me is that we’ve done a pretty good job globally. I thought that we would be barely scratching the surface of plant diversity. There are more than 400,000 species of plants. Many of them are very, very rare. They grow only in certain areas, and we’ve already covered about a quarter of that diversity around the world. That doesn’t sound like everything. It’s far from everything. But it’s a good start.

What surprised me equally was that there are major groups of plants, many kinds of mosses, for example, that we haven’t even touched. Close to 20% of all plant families are still absent from these databases. If you think back to why people are using these technologies, it’s to find out what the diversity of plants are and what plants grow where. That means that there’s entire lineages of plants that are literally unidentifiable and undetectable using this technology at this point. What really motivated me then was to think about how we could start recognizing those gaps and start working together to fill the gaps.

Mongabay: Coming to the technology, I am curious to know how you would describe the scope of DNA sequencing when it comes to biodiversity monitoring?

Tyler Kartzinel: The technology is becoming amazing. Sequencing technology, if you think back 25 years, required huge teams of people working in warehouses to sequence every little bit at a time. Now we can do that using machines that you can carry with you in a backpack and plug into your laptop. We can find DNA in water, and we can ask what’s the diversity of life living in the water. We can use vacuums to suck DNA out of the air and figure out what endangered species are living in a forest, even if we can’t see them. So the scope of the technology to generate the sequence data is incredible. It’s advancing as fast as computer technology did in its peak.

For all of that technology to succeed, however, it requires the background fieldwork and the taxonomy and the experts on the ground building the databases that we’re using to determine if what we found might be an endangered species or to convince ourselves that we’re able to detect all of the diversity of life in the water.

Mongabay: How is the technology faring in comparison to other tech that we could use to monitor biodiversity and keep us on track for the big biodiversity goals we have set?

Tyler Kartzinel: It’s a difficult question for me to answer objectively. I think that there are lots of technologies that are helping us think about biodiversity and the future of life. I think about
GPS tracking technology and how it helps us understand how animals move and how that’s teaching us that animals tend to use more habitat than we ever realized. I think about camera tracking technology and how that can reveal hidden wildlife in jungles around the world. It’s teaching us about how those animals use time and space. Where do they go during the day? Where do they go during the night? Same with acoustic monitoring.

All of these technologies are helping us appreciate more about the way the world works and how animals and plants survive. I don’t think that any one of these technologies is going to reveal the [full] truth about nature to us, but they provide evidence, information and insights that we as smart, engaged, committed conservation scientists can then use to help people understand what’s needed to protect life on Earth.

Mongabay: Coming to DNA sequencing tech, how do you think we can effectively translate the science for policy purposes?

Tyler Kartzinel: Conservation is local. It depends on what the local policies are and also the priorities and abilities to invest in conservation. I think the best way that biotech scientists can facilitate local conservation is to engage locally with the people who are making decisions, whether that’s governments or nonprofit organizations or academics, to figure out what the research need is and then work to adapt the technology to that need.

A really good example of that involves giraffes in Africa. The IUCN had been treating giraffes as a more or less homogeneous species, but genetic technology revealed that actually there’s several different species distributed across the continent. Now countries locally have recognized that there’s a special species of giraffe that they have, and that they get to invest in conserving that species. If you think about how that scales across the millions of species — many of which we care about, many of which we don’t know about — and think about how to apply that kind of technology, then you know that there is immense knowledge that can enter the policy space where there’s room for information to make a difference.

Mongabay: You had mentioned the lack of reference databases in many places. As we work toward these big biodiversity goals, how do we ramp that up?

Tyler Kartzinel: An analogy that I’ve been thinking about a lot comes from engineering. If you go anywhere, it seems you have access to a cell signal for your phone. It’s not everywhere, but it wasn’t once as good as it is. Now, if you go to a public place, like an airport or a mall or university, almost anywhere you sit, you can log on to WiFi. What those companies and engineers have figured out is how to look for dead zones and enhanced coverage. They look for where there’s the need and then they plug the gaps. We, in this work, have identified the places on the planet where we think there’s the greatest need. There are huge concentrations of biodiversity, and there has been a lack of investment and effort in building databases there. I don’t think scientists around the world need to duplicate efforts, and I don’t think local scientists should bear the full burden of investing in building those databases. But I do think that we could learn a little bit from the engineers and develop a coordinated strategy to focus our effort on the places with the greatest need. We need to recognize these parallels and learn from other areas to do better.

Mongabay: As we do that, what are the challenges you anticipate? And how do we work around those challenges?

Tyler Kartzinel: The pattern that we’ve documented here is not specific to DNA. It’s prevalent in biodiversity science across the board. There’s hundreds of years of power asymmetries and economic inequities and biases that have privileged biodiversity studies in some parts of the world versus others. I think we need to recognize that everything we’re doing exists within that context, and we should work to improve that. One of the ways that we can do that is by enhancing collaboration that improves access to technology and training. I think moving in the direction where we can rely on affordable, portable, easy-to-use technology, as opposed to the technology of 20 years ago will make a big difference.

But I don’t think it’s all about technology and access to technology. I think there’s also some policy challenges and opportunities to work through. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has been working to establish policies on the use of genetic information including digital sequence information and how that moves across borders. A big part of the motivation for doing that is to crack down on biopiracy. That is, rich companies coming into poor regions and exploiting the biodiversity that they have there for profit without giving back. What the CBD is doing is consistent with the work we need to do to break through centuries of inequity.

But there are unintended consequences where academic and biodiversity research is getting caught in the same trap with bureaucratic paperwork and barriers. Maybe we’re just going through a period of growing pains globally, but we need to get through that quickly if we’re going to succeed in sharing and working together.

Mongabay: Once we get to that phase where these challenges are solved, how do you envision it? What’s the best-case scenario?

Tyler Kartzinel: One of the laws of conservation is that it never stops. It’s always got to evolve and be proactive as society changes and as the need changes. We are living through this period of incredible climate change and land-use change and so new challenges are going to arise.

What I would love to see is this technology being an effective part of the portfolio. It could be a nimble way for information gathering strategies to empower conservation and conservation policy to evolve at the pace required to ensure a future for biodiversity.

Abhishyant Kidangoor is a staff writer at Mongabay. Find him on 𝕏 @AbhishyantPK.

Citation:

Kartzinel, T. R., Hoff, H. K., Divoll, T. J., Littleford‐Colquhoun, B. L., Anderson, H., Burak, M. K., … Kartzinel, R. Y. (2025). Global availability of plant DNA barcodes as genomic resources to support basic and policy‐relevant biodiversity research. Molecular Ecology, 34(7). doi:10.1111/mec.17712

Banner image: Tyler Kartzinel’s research highlighted the gaps in DNA reference databases in tropical biodiversity hotspots. Image courtesy of Tyler Kartzinel