A5001880405- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
- Research Data Management Practices
- Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies
- Semantic Web and Ontologies
- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Marine and environmental studies
- Data Quality and Management
- Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Invertebrate Taxonomy and Ecology
- Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
- Geographic Information Systems Studies
- Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
- Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
- Plant and animal studies
- Isotope Analysis in Ecology
- Genetic diversity and population structure
- Data Management and Algorithms
- Animal and Plant Science Education
- Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Fish Ecology and Management Studies
- Animal Behavior and Reproduction
University of California, Berkeley
2015-2024
Institute of Natural Sciences
2023
Vanderbilt University
2023
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
2022-2023
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
2010-2023
Atlas of Living Australia
2023
Cornell University
2023
Yale University
2022-2023
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
2023
University of Massachusetts Boston
2023
Biodiversity data derive from myriad sources stored in various formats on many distinct hardware and software platforms. An essential step towards understanding global patterns of biodiversity is to provide a standardized view these heterogeneous improve interoperability. Fundamental this advance are definitions common terms. This paper describes the evolution development Darwin Core, standard for publishing integrating information. We focus categories terms that define standard, differences...
Natural history museums store millions of specimens geological, biological, and cultural entities. Data related to these objects are in increasing demand for investigations biodiversity its relationship the environment anthropogenic disturbance. A major barrier use data GIS is that collecting localities have typically been recorded as textual descriptions, without geographic coordinates. We describe a method georeferencing locality descriptions accounts idiosyncrasies, sources uncertainty,...
The planet is experiencing an ongoing global biodiversity crisis. Measuring the magnitude and rate of change more effectively requires access to organized, easily discoverable, digitally-formatted data, both legacy new, from across globe. Assembling this coherent digital representation integration data that have historically been analog, dispersed, heterogeneous. Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) a software package developed support dataset publication in common format. IPT’s two primary...
Biodiversity is in a crisis caused by multiple human impacts on the environment [1]–[3]. The immediate and critical tasks addressing this are to examine global biodiversity patterns document changes through time space order understand factors contributing loss of [4]. Meeting challenge has emerged as priority [5]–[7] that requires approaches mobilize data across broad geographic taxonomic ranges. The community vertebrate natural history collections begun meet establishing social...
The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, ecological niches, complemented by information on collection measurement protocols. A review the current landscape metadata standards ontologies in science suggests that existing such as Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing a semantically meaningful computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, Gene Ontology others Open...
Over the past 250 years, biologists who were interested in describing and understanding patterns of biological diversity have gone into field to observe collect species. Conservation specimens data collected through these explorations has produced an irreplaceable archive life on Earth [1]. Today, billions natural history collections, such as dried plants stuffed birds, play a fundamental role generating new knowledge about biodiversity guiding its conservation. Yet, potential this vast...
Genomic samples of non-model organisms are becoming increasingly important in a broad range studies from developmental biology, biodiversity analyses, to conservation. sample definition, description, quality, voucher information and metadata all need be digitized disseminated across scientific communities. This needs concise consistent today's ever-increasing bioinformatic era, for complementary data aggregators easily map databases one another. In order facilitate exchange on genomic their...
There has been major progress over the last two decades in digitising historical knowledge of biodiversity and making data freely openly accessible. Interlocking efforts bring together international partnerships networks, national, regional institutional projects investments countless individual contributors, spanning diverse biological environmental research domains, government agencies non-governmental organisations, citizen science commercial enterprise. However, current remain...
Natural history collections (NHCs) represent an enormous and largely untapped wealth of information on the Earth's biota, made available through GBIF as digital preserved specimen records. Precise knowledge where specimens were collected is paramount to rigorous ecological studies, especially in field species distribution modelling. Here, we present a first comprehensive analysis georeferencing quality for all records served by GBIF, illustrate impact that coordinate uncertainty may have...
Preliminary studies indicate that the recently described colonial tuco-tuco (Ctenomys sociabilis) is social. As part of efforts to characterize behavioral ecology this species, we examined patterns use burrows by members a free-living population C. sociabilis located in southern Neuquen Province, Argentina. many as five adults (one male, four females) were captured within single colony (spatially distinct cluster burrow entrances). Spatial relationships among eight from three colonies...
Locality information for specimens of geological, biological, and cultural objects is traditionally stored as textual descriptions. With an increasing demand natural information, the lack spatially explicit descriptions has become a major barrier to management analysis these data using geographic systems. In this paper, we propose method georeference descriptive data, uncertainty field model represent distribution locality based on two types uncertainties: reference objects, spatial...
Biodiversity data is being digitized and made available online at a rapidly increasing rate but current practices typically do not preserve linkages between these data, which impedes interoperation, provenance tracking, assembly of larger datasets. For associated with biocollections, the biodiversity community has long recognized that an essential part establishing preserving to apply globally unique identifiers point when are generated in field persist downstream, this seldom implemented...
To improve the suitability of Darwin Core standard for research and management alien species, needs to express native status organisms, how well established they are came occupy a location. facilitate this, we propose: 1. adopt controlled vocabulary existing term dwc:establishmentMeans 2. elevate pathway from Invasive Species Pathways extension become new dwc:pathway maintained as part 3. dwc:degreeOfEstablishment with an associated These changes will allow users clearly state whether...
For vast areas of the globe and large parts tree life, data needed to inform trait diversity is incomplete. Such data, when fully assembled, however, form link between evolutionary history organisms, their assembly into communities, nature functioning ecosystems. Recent efforts close gaps have focused on collating trait-by-species databases, which only provide species-level, aggregated value ranges for traits interest often lack direct observations those are based. Perhaps under-appreciated...
The field of biodiversity informatics is in a massive, “grow-out” phase creating and enabling large-scale data resources. Because perhaps 90% existing nonetheless remains unavailable for science policy applications, the question arises as to how these available records can be mobilized most efficiently effectively. This situation led our analysis several datasets regarding birds plants, detecting information gaps documenting “leakage” or attrition, terms on taxon, time, place, each record....
Group living is an important component of the social biology numerous rodent species. For past 2 decades, efforts to understand ecological factors associated with group in rodents have focused on subterranean taxa, particular African mole-rats family Bathyergidae. Comparative analyses habitats occupied by solitary and bathyergids suggest that occurs when combined effects sporadic rainfall, hard soils, patchily distributed food resources render energetic costs burrow excavation prohibitive...
Natural history collections are the authoritative source of knowledge about identity, evolutionary relationships, and attributes species with which we share this planet. As such, research specimens play a central critical role in conservation sustainable use biodiversity. The potential contribution specimen data to systematic, genomic, ecological analyses is enormous, will be orders magnitude greater when information made easily accessible via distributed networks compared stand-alone...
Kinship plays a significant role in shaping the social and genetic structures of many vertebrate populations. Evidence kinship, however, may be substantially influenced by spatial temporal scales over which co-ancestry is monitored. For example, while data on group composition yield little indication relatedness among reproductive partners, demographic structure population reveal considerable shared ancestry mates. We explored relationships composition, individual movements, population-level...
The quality of biodiversity data publicly accessible via aggregators such as GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), the ALA (Atlas Living Australia), iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections), and OBIS (Ocean Biogeographic System) is often questioned, especially by research community. Data Quality Interest Group, established Standards (TDWG) GBIF, has been engaged in four main activities: developing a framework for assessment management using fitness use approach; defining core...
Abstract Camera trapping has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation by providing automated data acquisition, leading to the accumulation of massive amounts camera trap worldwide. Although management processing trap‐derived Big Data are becoming increasingly solvable with help scalable cyber‐infrastructures, harmonization exchange remain limited, hindering its full potential. There is currently no widely accepted standard for exchanging data. The only existing proposal, “Camera Trap...
In practice, descriptive localities are often communicated using named places and spatial relationships. Uncertainty associated with such descriptions of is inevitable, knowledge uncertainty normally not explicit. When translating into spatially explicit ones, it critical to circumscribe locations estimate the based on a set appropriate conventional research qualitative reasoning (QSR), relationships modeled formal logic. Unfortunately, QSR cannot deal position. this paper, conceptual model...
Georeferencing is a key process in the digitization of natural history collections as it assigns spatial coordinates to preserved specimen collecting locations, facilitating their use ecological, evolutionary and conservation research. Georeference data public repositories such GBIF often missing or incomplete, jeopardising research limiting return on investment made by institutions. Despite existence guidelines for best practices georeferencing widely accepted standards biodiversity data,...