The ChallenGen project aims at applying both classical and new (derived from Next Generation Sequencing technologies) genetic tools to three challenges identified within the framework of benthic marine research. It is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The project team comprises two main groups, one belonging to the Marine Ecology Department of the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (Spanish Research Council, CSIC), and the second one comprising members of the Departments of Genetics and Animal Biology of the University of Barcelona. We also have foreign participants belonging to the University of Southampton and the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences.
This project represents a step forward in the already long endeavour of the participant groups to develop and apply molecular techniques to the study of the benthos. Our emphasis is on oriented research and we seek to develop the best available tools and generate new information to address the following challenges: 1) to tackle and mitigate the problem of introduced species, 2) to develop new tools for biodiversity assessment and 3) to predict foreseeable changes in a scenario of increasing temperature. These three challenges constitute the three objectives of the proposal. Some of these objectives will represent applications of still-developing techniques, so we expect to contribute not only in generating data, but also in developing new methods that can be applied to other fields.
Aside from continuing our involvement in publishing our results in scientific journals, we will put particular emphasis in translating the results to stakeholders and local enterprises in the form of management guidance, reports, establishment of repeatable protocols and setting up of baseline datasets for future studies. We are also committed to the dissemination of the results to the general public and to raise awareness about some of the pressures faced by our littoral systems.