standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

Kew had insisted that it was the owner of plants growing in its backyard. He
understood that both sides had backed off. However, this was a current
problem for museums that used to take specimens from all over the world;
those specimens were drying up now that countries were afraid the
museums were going to steal their genes. The problem had been the
absence of a policy, though he believed that a set of rules was now in place.
As no one owned most of the deep sea, the answer was that
bioprospecting could be done now but no one was doing it. The prospect
was interesting because nematodes could be found everywhere, from hot
water sulphur springs to the Skaggerak in the North Sea, where he had
taken live ones from frozen coal dust. A German group in Bremerhaven had
taken live nematodes from the Arctic pack ice and was working on the
biodiversity of Antarctic terrestrial nematodes. Nematodes had an amazing
ability to survive environmental conditions, and their enzymes worked.
Collection techniques
Asked about the procedure for estimating the abundance of
nematodes in box cores, Lambshead replied that all the nematodes in a
sub-core were mounted, on the false assumption that they represented the
whole core, and the numbers were then multiplied. An analysis of box cores
versus meiofauna cores from the same area, published by Vincx et al., had
shown that, as a mean, box cores were 40% as efficient as meiofauna
cores. That percentage was misleading, however, because much depended
on such factors as the nature of the sediment and the skill of the box-core
operator, which used to be very important. When Adam Cook had tried to
compare nematode abundances from around the world and the first graph
did not look good, he had adjusted the box-core numbers by 40% and
produced a better curve.
Box cores should not be used for meiofauna, though they were
regarded as tolerably acceptable, depending on how the data were being
used. As the box core tended to blow away the surface, it did not collect the
same species at the same depth in the sediment. Moreover, besides the
reduction in numbers, it collected slightly different fauna than a random
sub-sample of a meiofauna core. The problem did not always arise,
however. In certain CCFZ data from both meiofauna cores and box cores,
an analysis of both abundance and diversity had shown no difference
between the devices; the box cores seemed adequate, probably thanks to a
skilled crane operator. Another factor might be the sediment: one geologist
had told the Workshop that the sediment was coarse in situ, so that the box
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