Tyler Kartzinel likens protecting biodiversity to enhancing cellphone networks. His analogy is pretty straightforward: look for gaps in coverage, and then do what’s needed to fill them. “Engineers have figured out how to look for dead zones and enhance coverage,” Kartzinel, associate professor of ecology, evolution and organizational biology at Brown University in the U.S., told Mongabay in a video interview. “They look for where the need is and plug the gaps.” That, according to Kartzinel, is exactly what scientists need to do when it comes to DNA sequencing technology. In recent years, DNA sampling and analysis technology have advanced rapidly, with scientists using drones and robots to collect samples from the remotest corners of the world. But a common grouse persists: the lack of extensive reference libraries against which scientists can compare samples to identity species. A study led by Kartzinel and published in the journal Molecular Ecology looks at how reference libraries are faring. While databases were found to cover a quarter of the plant species that the team looked into, they found “coverage gaps in tropical biodiversity hotspots” reflecting “well-documented biases in biodiversity science.” The study found that at least 17% of the plant families they looked into lacked any reference data. “There’s hundreds of years of power asymmetries and economic inequities that have privileged biodiversity studies in some parts of the world versus others,” Kartzinel said. “In areas which could arguably benefit the most from this technology, we’re actually most limited in the data sets.” He…This article was originally published on Mongabay