Скачать или смотреть Wytham Woods: Bug hunting to transform biology

Under the ownership of the University of Oxford since the 1940s, Wytham Woods has been the site of many long-term ecological research projects - including studies of birds, badgers and plants.

Since 2019 these woods have played an integral part in the Darwin Tree of Life project, which aims to generate high-quality reference genomes for the estimated 70,000 species living in Britain and Ireland.

The DToL team at Wytham has collected a huge variety of arthropods and other life for genome sequencing. The species tally already numbers into the thousands, with little sign of collections slowing. What's more, the team are using the genomic data generated by the project to unlock some of the secrets of invertebrate biology.

Dr. Liam Crowley, an entomologist at Oxford, is one of the most prolific collectors in the woods. He explains what the research at Wytham entails, and how the project is set to transform biology.