California Sea Grant College Program

The overall goal of this project was to develop the necessary infrastructure to permit species identification of California marine fishes using molecular sequence data. This involved the following efforts. 1) Compilation of an up-to- date list of marine fish species occurring in and around California. 2) Collecting and archiving in the Marine Vertebrate Collection, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, tissues and voucher specimens of California marine fish species. 3) Development of a standardized protocol for molecular identification of fishes, including sample preparation/DNA extraction, DNA amplification via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA sequencing, using three mitochondrial gene sequences (cytochrome b, 16S ribosomal DNA, cytochrome oxidase 1). 4) Making sequence data available on-line permitting remote comparison of sequence data with reference sequences from known species.