Diversity of Wild Palms (Arecaceae) in the Republic of Benin: Finding the Gaps in the National Inventory Combining Field and Digital Accessible Knowledge

Idohou, Rodrigue; Ariño, Arturo H.; Assogbadjo, Achille Ephrem; Kakaï, Romain Lucas Glèlè; Sinsin, Brice

doi:10.17161/bi.v10i2.4914

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Open-access biodiversity databases are essential to biodiversity research and conservation (Sober on and Peterson, 2004;Peterson et al 2010); however, the efficacy of these databases depends on the completeness of species inventories and the coverage of surveys across dimensions of space, environment, and time (Kadmon et al 2003;Hortal et al 2008;Ladle and Hortal 2013). Many assessments have been completed for regions of the world including Central America, South America, the Iberian Peninsula, and western Africa (Hortal et al 2007(Hortal et al , 2008Sober on et al 2007;Sousa-Baena et al 2013;Idohou et al 2015) as well as the entire globe (Meyer et al 2015). Still, no study to our knowledge has evaluated completeness and/ or coverage of open-access biodiversity data for the United States.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Filling in the GAPS: evaluating completeness and coverage of open‐access biodiversity databases in the United States

Troia

McManamay

2016

Ecology and Evolution

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Primary biodiversity data constitute observations of particular species at given points in time and space. Open‐access electronic databases provide unprecedented access to these data, but their usefulness in characterizing species distributions and patterns in biodiversity depend on how complete species inventories are at a given survey location and how uniformly distributed survey locations are along dimensions of time, space, and environment. Our aim was to compare completeness and coverage among three open‐access databases representing ten taxonomic groups (amphibians, birds, freshwater bivalves, crayfish, freshwater fish, fungi, insects, mammals, plants, and reptiles) in the contiguous United States. We compiled occurrence records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), and federally administered fish surveys (FFS). We aggregated occurrence records by 0.1° × 0.1° grid cells and computed three completeness metrics to classify each grid cell as well‐surveyed or not. Next, we compared frequency distributions of surveyed grid cells to background environmental conditions in a GIS and performed Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests to quantify coverage through time, along two spatial gradients, and along eight environmental gradients. The three databases contributed >13.6 million reliable occurrence records distributed among >190,000 grid cells. The percent of well‐surveyed grid cells was substantially lower for GBIF (5.2%) than for systematic surveys (BBS and FFS; 82.5%). Still, the large number of GBIF occurrence records produced at least 250 well‐surveyed grid cells for six of nine taxonomic groups. Coverages of systematic surveys were less biased across spatial and environmental dimensions but were more biased in temporal coverage compared to GBIF data. GBIF coverages also varied among taxonomic groups, consistent with commonly recognized geographic, environmental, and institutional sampling biases. This comprehensive assessment of biodiversity data across the contiguous United States provides a prioritization scheme to fill in the gaps by contributing existing occurrence records to the public domain and planning future surveys.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Filling in the GAPS: evaluating completeness and coverage of open‐access biodiversity databases in the United States

Troia

McManamay

2016

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Field sampling efforts should focus in areas identified herein as both environmentally different and geographically distant from wellknown sites. Such information exists for only a few countries, such as Brazil (Sousa-Baena et al 2013, Idohou et al 2015, Koffi et al 2015. This kind of information is important for strategic national policy (Soberón and Peterson, 2009), and is an important step towards meeting the Aichi Targets 3 and national commitments to the Clearing House Mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity 4 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Completeness of Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Plants of Ghana

Asase

Peterson

2016

Biodiv. Inf.

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Abstract.-Providing comprehensive, informative, primary, research-grade biodiversity information represents an important focus of biodiversity informatics initiatives. Recent efforts within Ghana have digitized >90% of primary biodiversity data records associated with specimen sheets in Ghanaian herbaria; additional herbarium data are available from other institutions via biodiversity informatics initiatives such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. However, data on the plants of Ghana have not as yet been integrated and assessed to establish how complete site inventories are, so that appropriate levels of confidence can be applied. In this study, we assessed inventory completeness and identified gaps in current Digital Accessible Knowledge (DAK) of the plants of Ghana, to prioritize areas for future surveys and inventories. We evaluated the completeness of inventories at ½° spatial resolution using statistics that summarize inventory completeness, and characterized gaps in coverage in terms of geographic distance and climatic difference from well-documented sites across the country. The southwestern and southeastern parts of the country held many well-known grid cells; the largest spatial gaps were found in central and northern parts of the country. Climatic difference showed contrasting patterns, with a dramatic gap in coverage in central-northern Ghana. This study provides a detailed case study of how to prioritize for new botanical surveys and inventories based on existing DAK.

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“…This spatial resolution was the product of a detailed analysis of balancing benefits of aggregating data (i.e., larger sample sizes), versus the loss of spatial resolution that accompanies broader aggregation areas that can make important geographic features imperceptible (i.e., 1° resolution is a square ~110 km on a side). Details of this procedure are provided by Sousa-Baena et al (2014) and explored and analyzed in more detail for African examples in Idohou et al (2015) and Koffi et al (2015).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Knowledge of Kenyan Succulent Flora and Priorities for Future Inventory and Documentation

Wabuyele¹,

Kang’ethe²,

Newton³

2016

Biodiv. Inf.

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Abstract.-Biodiversity inventory in Kenya has been ongoing for about a century and a half, coinciding with the arrival of naturalists from Europe, America, and elsewhere outside Africa. Since the first collections in the mid-to-late 1800s, there has been a steady increase of plant surveys, frequency of inventory, and discovery of new species that have considerably increased knowledge of faunal and floristic elements. However, as in all other countries, such historical biological collection activities are more often than not, ad hoc, resulting in gaps in knowledge of species and their habitats. While Kenya is relatively rich botanically, with a succulent flora of about 428 taxa, it is apparent that the list is understated owing to, among other factors, difficulty of preparing herbarium material and restricted access to some sites. This study investigated completeness of geographic knowledge of succulent plants in Kenya, with the aim of establishing species distribution patterns and identifying gaps that will guide and justify priority setting for future work on the group. Species data were filtered from the general BRAHMS database at the East African Herbarium and cleaned via an iterative series of inspections and visualizations designed to detect and document inconsistencies in taxonomic concepts, geographic coordinates, and dates of collection. Eight grid squares fulfilled criteria for completeness of inventory: one in the city of Mombasa, one in the Kulal-Nyiro complex, one in Garissa, one in Baringo, and four grid squares in the Nairobi-Nakuru-Laikipia area. Poorly-known areas, mostly in the west, north, and north-eastern regions of the country, were extremely isolated from wellknown sites, both geographically and environmentally. These localities should be prioritised for future inventory as they are likely to yield species new to science, species new to the national flora, and/or contribute new knowledge on habitats. To avoid inconsistencies and data leakage, biodiversity inventory and documentation needs streamlining to generate standardised metadata that should be digitised to enhance access and synthesis.

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Diversity of Wild Palms (Arecaceae) in the Republic of Benin: Finding the Gaps in the National Inventory Combining Field and Digital Accessible Knowledge

Cited by 23 publications

References 29 publications

Filling in the GAPS: evaluating completeness and coverage of open‐access biodiversity databases in the United States

Filling in the GAPS: evaluating completeness and coverage of open‐access biodiversity databases in the United States

Completeness of Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Plants of Ghana

Digital Knowledge of Kenyan Succulent Flora and Priorities for Future Inventory and Documentation

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