Technological developments in genomics are revolutionizing the study of biodiversity on Earth.  Great advances are taking place in the sequencing of complete genomes, metagenomes, and the DNA barcoding of eukaryotic biotas, yet these efforts are still only a ‘drop in the bucket’ of what is possible.  Although the costs of sequencing are falling rapidly, even small scale genomic studies are still costly, especially in terms of the time and resources required to annotate and interpret the vast quantities of resulting data.  Therefore, we argue that when it comes to applying the power of the genomics revolution to large-scale biodiversity and ecological studies, we as a community, should begin to focus on sites of long-term research interest.  The ultimate goal of such ’DNA centric’, ‘place-based’ work is to go beyond the sequencing of independent (unrelated) genomes, to understanding the complete set of interactions of living organisms in a particular environment (ecosystem) from microbes to eukaryotes.  We can drive this scientific paradigm shift, by focusing on Genomic Observatories co-located at research sites with rich histories of data collection and long-term commitments to future studies.

We will offer a combination of talks and discussion on how to build such a network and the need to bridge standards, especially from genomics (e.g., Genome Standards Consortium) and taxonomy (e.g. Darwin Core).  The participants will consider the opportunities and challenges associated with the creation and maintenance of GOs and debate the informatics cyberinfrastructure required to address critical scientific questions.  Genomic observatories will document information about DNA-level diversity and patterns of genetic variation and especially how this changes over time.  Crucially, they will also need to link these data with other digital data about species observations (biodiversity), interactions (ecology), and environment (local and remote sensing).  The GO network aims to mainstream ecogenomic data into next-generation Earth Observing Systems, and improve and validate models – at the local and global levels – to better understand and manage climate change and ecosystem services.   This symposium will help begin to forge a community-level shared vision for unifying long-term research sites into GOs.  The stage will be set by an introductory presentation by the Co-Chairs followed by talks from the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), two founding “Genomic Observatories” - one primarily eukaryotic the other microbial - followed by a talk from the Biological Science Collections Tracker (BiSciCol) project.  Each talk is 15mins including a few minutes for questions.

1. Neil Davies (Berkeley) The vision of a “Genomic Observatories” Network
2. David Schindel (Smithsonian)– CBOL DNA Barcoding and Long-Term Ecological Studies
3. Chris Meyer (Smithsonian)– Moorea Biocode: Whole Ecome Sequencing
4. Jack Gilbert (Argonne National Labs) and Dawn Field (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) – The Western English Channel L4 site: A marine GO
5. John Deck (Berkeley) – BiSciCol: from tracking biodiversity objects to brokering standards (Towards a Sustainable Cyberinfrastructure for GOs)

• Discussion at the proposed Biodiversity Genomics Interest Group (BioGIG) ideally following directly afterwards