Research applications of primary biodiversity databases in the digital age

Abstract

Our world is in the midst of unprecedented change—climate shifts and sustained, widespread habitat degradation have led to dramatic declines in biodiversity rivaling historical extinction events. At the same time, new approaches to publishing and integrating previously disconnected data resources promise to help provide the evidence needed for more efficient and effective conservation and management. Stakeholders have invested considerable resources to contribute to online databases of species occurrences. However, estimates suggest that only 10% of biocollections are available in digital form. The biocollections community must therefore continue to promote digitization efforts, which in part requires demonstrating compelling applications of the data. Our overarching goal is therefore to determine trends in use of mobilized species occurrence data since 2010, as online systems have grown and now provide over one billion records. To do this, we characterized 501 papers that use openly accessible biodiversity databases. Our standardized tagging protocol was based on key topics of interest, including: database(s) used, taxa addressed, general uses of data, other data types linked to species occurrence data, and data quality issues addressed. We found that the most common uses of online biodiversity databases have been to estimate species distribution and richness, to outline data compilation and publication, and to assist in developing species checklists or describing new species. Only 69% of papers in our dataset addressed one or more aspects of data quality, which is low considering common errors and biases known to exist in opportunistic datasets. Globally, we find that biodiversity databases are still in the initial stages of data compilation. Novel and integrative applications are restricted to certain taxonomic groups and regions with higher numbers of quality records. Continued data digitization, publication, enhancement, and quality control efforts are necessary to make biodiversity science more efficient and relevant in our fast-changing environment.

Plant and fungal collections: Current status, future perspectives

“…The inaccuracies in geographic coordinate information and inconsistency of use of taxonomic names on collection data create difficulties in analyzing data sets (Ball‐Damerow et al, 2019; Meyer et al., 2016; Mounce et al., 2017). Paul and Fisher (2018) and Ball‐Damerow et al (2019) stress the importance of creating better automated solutions to flag errors, such as the newly developed software CoordinateCleaner (Zizka et al., 2019) and efficient mechanisms to report and correct data quality issues back to the source. Although automated flagging of erroneous records can improve certain analyses (e.g., Maldonado et al., 2015) it is often crucial that specialists validate results in a critical way in relation to their taxonomic group of expertise (Zizka, Carvalho, et al, 2020).…”

What Are the Grand Challenges for Plant Conservation in the 21st Century?

“…Biodiversity data need to be managed in forms that are accessible and useful to practitioners (Ball-Damerow et al, 2019), requiring collaborative efforts that integrate and coordinate while remaining flexible enough to accommodate the dynamics of changing knowledge and available information (Costello et al, 2018).…”

Fifth Report of the Committee for Ecuadorian Records in Ornithology (Cero), With Comments on Some Published, Undocumented Records

“…The unprecedented volume of information being compiled in publicly-accessible online archives provides exciting opportunities for rapid advances in knowledge on species distribution, especially in poorly studied regions. However, the public nature of such databases poses risks related to the accumulation and propagation of erroneous or imprecise data (Ball-Damerow et al, 2019;Bayraktarov et al, 2019). While large global records repositories such as www.macaulaylibrary.org and www.ebird.org provide increasingly convenient access for a range of data contributors and consumers, this same ease of use presents significant challenges for review and validation of reports.…”