Latest Biodiversity Informatics Stories
Pensoft Publishers A new peer-reviewed data paper offers a comprehensive, open-access collection of georeferenced biological information about the Antarctic macrobenthic communities. The term macrobenthic refers to the visible-for-the-eye organisms that live near or on the sea bottom such as echinoderms, sponges, ascidians, crustaceans. The paper will help in coordinating biodiversity research and conservation activities on species living near the ocean bottom of the Antarctic. The data...
A new Marine Board Future Science Brief presents a roadmap for marine biodiversity science in Europe and warns against complacency. The ocean provides 95% of the habitable space on Earth and harbors a vast diversity of life. Biodiversity underpins the health of the oceans and their productive ecosystems which are essential for human well-being and prosperity. But marine life is under significant threat from climate change and from increasing human impacts including pollution, overfishing...
Public to play major role in mobilizing expanded range of data needed to preserve vital functions of life on Earth, conference concludes. A landmark conference has agreed key priorities for harnessing the power of information technologies and social networks to understand better the workings of life on Earth, focussing on how biodiversity can continue to sustain human lives and livelihoods. The Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC), gathering some 100 experts from around the...
Scientists say worldwide collections, existing experts and technology make charting 10 million species in less than 50 years achievable; a necessary step to sustain planet's biodiversity An ambitious goal to describe 10 million species in less than 50 years is achievable and necessary to sustain Earth's biodiversity, according to an international group of 39 scientists, scholars and engineers who provided a detailed plan, including measures to build public support, in the March 30 issue of...
Aligning standards will help share information on biodiversity yet to be discovered. Important progress has been achieved towards including genomic-level information in the data made freely available through GBIF. Successful alignment of informatics standards for recording species occurrences and gene-sequence descriptions has opened up new possibilities for integrating the different types of data. The mapping of three standards was completed at a GBIF-led workshop in Oxford, United...
Increase in content partnerships, growing Spanish-language text, conservation content, and images boost Encyclopedia of Life's value to scientists and general public The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL, www.eol.org) continues to expand at a record pace with the addition of new content and partners. At the start of 2012, EOL provides data on nearly half of all described species, with new content in Spanish, rich information about conservation issues from the International Union for the...
Recommendations target social, cultural, technical, policy, legal, economic components to promote data sharing A comprehensive framework to encourage and facilitate the sharing of biodiversity data has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The 24 recommendations of the GBIF Data Publishing Framework Task Group are included in a special supplement of BMC Bioinformatics. Some of the measures proposed by the task group have already been taken up by GBIF and others, including the...
Natural history plans to chart life on earth, yet the discipline risks being buried under a landslide of painstakingly collected data that isn't always used. Now researchers at London's Natural History Museum have created a social networking tool called 'Scratchpads' where natural historians can get together and share their data. A paper on this new platform features in a supplement on biodiversity informatics published today in the open access journal, BMC Bioinformatics.Vincent Smith, Simon...
World Register of Marine Species inaugurated with first 122,500 validated names; over 56,000 aliases for ocean species identifiedCensus of Marine Life-affiliated scientists consolidating world databases of ocean organisms have demoted to alias status almost one-third of all names culled from 34 regional and highly specialized inventories.The new World Register of Marine Species contains about 122,500 validated marine species names (experts having recognized and tidied up some 56,400 aliases...
In time for National Pollinator Week, June 22 through June 28, biologists have completed an online effort to compile a world checklist of bees. They have identified nearly 19,500 bee species worldwide, about 2,000 more than previously estimated. There is a current crisis known as "colony collapse disorder," an unexplained phenomenon that is wiping out colonies of honey bees throughout the United States. This has highlighted the need for more information about bee species and their...
