Species analysis in Biodiversity hotspot: Kabobo, Democratic Republic of Congo

Massimo Delledonne of the University of Verona, and his collaborators at Taxon Expeditions (@Taxonexped), have used the field kit on scientific expeditions that seek to discover new species and understand the evolution and diversity of wildlife in various environments. Famous for naming a new species of water beetle after Leonardo DiCaprio, Taxon visits biodiversity hotspots such as Borneo, Montenegro and the Congo. The field kit was used on their last trip to Borneo in September 2018. In 2015, together with the Muse museum they used the MinION to sequence in-field for the first time, in 2016 Taxon were the first group to use nanopore technology to identify a new species of frog in the wild, and in 2017 they also tested the Oxford Nanopore automated preparation device VolTRAX.

Authors: Massimo Delledonne