I’m active in the mycology community, where DNA sequencing is widely used by community scientists (60,000+ sequences). I’m curious if there are communities around plants or animals that also generate a lot of DNA barcodes, and use DNA barcoding to uncover new species or resolve questions around existing species. I’m a bit in a mycology bubble, but would love to understand what’s happening outside it - best practices, interesting projects relating to other kingdoms.
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By ‘community scientist’, do you mean the same as ‘citizen scientist’ (i.e. amateur, self-resourced)? If so then I didn’t even know DNA testing had become accessible to hobbyists. How do you get into it (equipment, techniques, resources) ?
Sorry, yes citizen scientist/amateur naturalist.
Yes this is has become accessible via people doing their own PCR, or large scale sequencing via Nanopore labs run by non-professionals
i would probably look for DNA-related observation fields in the system (https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?commit=Search&q=dna&utf8=✓) and see how folks are using those. you could also look for DNA-related projects (https://www.inaturalist.org/search?q=DNA&source[]=projects).
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