Biodiversity Biobanking – a Handbook on Protocols and Practices

Abstract

We are today confronted with an unprecedented, ever-increasing rate of global biodiversity decline at the ecosystem, the species, and the genetic level, with yet unforeseeable consequences for both our planet and humankind.To mitigate the underlying anthropogenic processes, political action is overdue, informed by science. At the same time, the scientific community is called upon as a major player on another front: as a response to current and expected biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, we need to promptly and drastically ramp up efforts regarding ex-situ conservation and regarding the archival of molecular samples. Key infrastructures in this process are biobanks (see, e.g., Jarman et al. 2018; Ryder and Onuma 2018; Colella et al. 2020; Angeles and Catap 2022).