TORONTO — Call it a DNA digital Dewey Decimal System for all life on Earth.

Every species, from extinct to thriving, is set to get its own DNA barcode in an attempt to better track the ones that are endangered, as well as those being shipped across international borders as food or consumer products.

Researchers hope handheld mobile devices will be able to one day read these digital strips of rainbow-colored barcodes — much like supermarket scanners — to identify different species by testing tissue samples on site and comparing them with a digital database.

The International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL), which says it is the world’s first reference library of DNA barcodes and the world’s largest biodiversity genomics project, is being built by scientists using fragments of DNA to create a database of all life forms.

‘What we’re trying to do is to create this global library of DNA barcodes — snippets, little chunks of DNA — that permit us to identify species,’ Alex Smith, assistant professor of molecular ecology at the University of Guelph’s Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, about 90 km (56 miles) west of Toronto.

So far DNA barcoding has helped identify the type of birds that forced last year’s emergency […]