Natural History Collection Data: Traits to Identify Plant-Pollinator Interactions in a Spatial Context

Natural history collections are of extreme importance as they safeguard data from both spatial and temporal sources. Biological collections store the biodiversity information of the majority of the world´s ecosystems, including data from extinct and threatened species. Worldwide, interactions betweens species perform important functions that contribute to the maintenance of the environment. The use of biodiversity by human society generates the so called Ecosystems Services (Nature’s Contributions to People), which may act at a local or even a global scale, as is the case with crop pollination services. Bees are the most important pollinator group and are responsible for the pollination of approximately 80% of Angiosperms and 75% of the crops worldwide. Bee pollinator decline has raised concern globally, the loss and degradation of habitat being one of the causes, with detrimental impacts on food production and biodiversity. In this context, we suggest incorporating and providing spatially explicit plant-pollinator interaction data into natural history collections databases. Plant-pollinator interaction traits (morphological, biochemical, physiological, structural, phenological or behavioural characteristics of organisms that influence performance or fitness) can firstly be identified through pollination syndromes by using floral traits such as size, shape, color, odor and the reward. Bee body size (estimated usually by intertegular distance) and tongue length are important traits that can be used to evaluate bee-flower compatibility and also to estimate an average flight range for each bee species through the landscape. Since interaction is context dependent, data on functional traits could be associated with spatial references, such as geographic coordinates, altitude and land use where species were collected. Such information is usually available in data repositories delivered by collections. Thus, the association of species identification, functional traits and occurrences can act as an important tool for understanding local ecosystem processes, to forecast impacts based on land use and climate change and also for assisting decision making processes for nature conservation. Online databases must also be linked to a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), as is the case for data plubications, so that the work of providing the data can be properly acknowledged and cited in the literature.

Download Full-text

Uncertain Geo-Uncertainty: Ecological research and public biodiversity data repositories

Biodiversity Information Science and Standards ◽

10.3897/biss.3.34826 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Author(s):

Arnald Marcer ◽

Elspeth Haston ◽

Quentin Groom ◽

F. Xavier Picó ◽

Agustí Escobar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Spatial Information ◽

Species Distribution Modelling ◽

Location Information ◽

Ecological Research ◽

Biodiversity Data ◽

Data Repositories ◽

Ecological Requirements ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

Wide Range

Natural history collections represent a vast and superb wealth of information gathered and curated across centuries by institutions such as natural history museums and botanical gardens around the world. The relatively recent advent and maturation of accessible computer technology has allowed the initiation of major digitization projects aimed at making the contents of these collections publicly available for education and research purposes. The final destinations of these newly digitized data are public biodiversity data repositories, of which, GBIF is the main one. These respositories are gateways where researchers can access and retrieve the data for use in a wide range of analyses. This unprecedented volume of information on biodiversity represents an extraordinary asset for research in ecology and evolution. A particularly important part of the digitized data for any given specimen is its collection location, as it indirectly gives information on the species’ habitat and thus, its ecological requirements. Many specimens in natural history collections come from a time where the collecting event, which includes the location information, was hand-written on physical tags attached to the specimen. This location information was given as a description of a place, e.g. a site name, and could be a rather precise or vague description. In order to convert this description of locality into a digitized research-grade georeferenced record, the research community has come up with a set of guidelines and recommendations; the most prominent one the point-radius method devised by Wieczorek et al. in 2004. However, and despite the public availability of this know-how, the end result is that the data available at the end of the pipeline, e.g. GBIF, often lacks georeferencing information with enough quality to be used for research purposes. Occurrence records from natural history collection datasets held at GBIF, often lack spatial coordinates and, if present, in most cases their precision and uncertainty fields are blank. The final consequence of this lack of complete georeferencing information is that the affected records are rendered useless for many kinds of research. For example, the flourishing field of species distribution modelling absolutely depends on accurate spatial information in order to be able to retrieve information on the environmental conditions in which the species live. The availability of global environmental and remote sensing datasets together with the sophisticated geospatial tools at the disposal of the researcher become powerless if no quality geoinformation is available. In this study, we perform a preliminary analysis on the status and availability of geoferencing information in datasets originated from specimens in natural history collections held at GBIF, discuss how the quality of this spatial info may affect ecological research, and conclude with some recommendations on how to better describe the georeferencing process within public digital biodiversity repositories.

Download Full-text

Documenting Natural History Collections in GBIF

Biodiversity Information Science and Standards ◽

10.3897/biss.3.37216 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Author(s):

Tim Robertson ◽

Marcos Gonzalez ◽

Morten Høfft ◽

Marie Grosjean

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Data Publishing ◽

Digital Object Identifier ◽

Digital Object ◽

Global Biodiversity Information Facility ◽

Global Science ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

The People ◽

Citation Practice ◽

Scientific Collections

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was established by governments in 2001, largely through the initiative and leadership of the natural history collections community, following the 1999 recommendation by a working group under the Megascience Forum (predecessor of the Global Science Forum) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Over 20 years, GBIF has helped develop standards and convened a global community of data-publishing institutions, aggregating over one billion species occurrence records freely and openly available for use in research and policy making. Of these more than 150 million records originate from specimens preserved by the collections community. The recent adoption of the Global Registry of Scientific Collections by GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/news/5kyAslpqTVxYqZTwYn1cub) is the first step by GBIF to better enable a picture of the natural history collections of the world along with the associated science that they have and continue to enable. Recognising that other collection metadata initiatives exists, GBIF aims to discuss with the community and progress topics such as: Synchronising with existing metadata catalogues to ensure accurate, up-to-date information is available without unnecessary burden for authors Defining, testing and formalizing the Collection Descriptions standard (https://github.com/tdwg/cd) Providing clear guidelines of citation practice for collections, potentially building on the success of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) approach used for datasets mediated through GBIF.org. Tracking citations of use through both data downloads and through references in literature, such as materials examined in a taxonomic publication Improving the linkages and discoverability of specimen records derived from the same collecting event but preserved in multiple institutions Improving the linkages between the people involved in collecting, preserving, and identifying specimen records through the use of Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCID) Lowering the technical threshold to deploy tools such as “data dashboards” and specimen search/download on collection related websites Synchronising with existing metadata catalogues to ensure accurate, up-to-date information is available without unnecessary burden for authors Defining, testing and formalizing the Collection Descriptions standard (https://github.com/tdwg/cd) Providing clear guidelines of citation practice for collections, potentially building on the success of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) approach used for datasets mediated through GBIF.org. Tracking citations of use through both data downloads and through references in literature, such as materials examined in a taxonomic publication Improving the linkages and discoverability of specimen records derived from the same collecting event but preserved in multiple institutions Improving the linkages between the people involved in collecting, preserving, and identifying specimen records through the use of Open Researcher and Contributor IDs (ORCID) Lowering the technical threshold to deploy tools such as “data dashboards” and specimen search/download on collection related websites The progress made to date will be summarised and a roadmap for the future will be introduced.

Download Full-text

230. Preparing for a Large-Scale Natural History Collections Relocation—Evaluating Potential Exposures

10.3320/1.2758590 ◽

2005 ◽

Author(s):

C. King ◽

P. Labbie

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Large Scale ◽

Natural History Collections

Download Full-text

Joseph Sidebotham: vicissitudes of a Victorian collector

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2015.0305 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 197-210 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Laurence M. Cook

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Species Limits ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

As Species ◽

Scientific World

Joseph Sidebotham (1824–1885) was a Manchester cotton baron whose natural history collections are now in the Manchester Museum. In addition to collecting he suggested a method for identifying and classifying Lepidoptera and investigated variation within species as well as species limits. With three close collaborators, he is credited with discovering many species new to Britain in both Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. A suspicion of fraud attaches to these claims. The evidence is not clear-cut in the Lepidoptera, but a possible reason is suggested why Sidebotham, as an amateur in the increasingly professional scientific world, might have engaged in deceit.

Download Full-text

The Banksian natural history collections of the Endeavour voyage and their relevance to modern taxonomy

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.1981.010 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 1981 (1) ◽

pp. 61-70

Author(s):

H. B. Carter ◽

Judith A. Diment ◽

C. J. Humphries ◽

Alwyne Wheeler

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Natural History Collections

Download Full-text

Correspondence between Adolphe Brongniart and Robert Schomburgk: trading natural history collections for honours

Archives of Natural History ◽

10.3366/anh.2002.29.3.333 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 333-336

Author(s):

PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽

MICHEL JEGU

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Natural History ◽

Dominican Republic ◽

Southeast Asia ◽

Herbarium Specimens ◽

British Guiana ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

History Of ◽

Source Of Information ◽

German Naturalist

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.

Download Full-text

Involving undergraduates in the digital community: Leveraging collections preservation, research, and outreach through a network of natural history collections clubs

10.1603/ice.2016.93754 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Kari Harris

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Digital Community ◽

Natural History Collections

Download Full-text

A research framework for projecting ecosystem change in highly diverse tropical mountain ecosystems

Oecologia ◽

10.1007/s00442-021-04852-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jörg Bendix ◽

Nicolay Aguire ◽

Erwin Beck ◽

Achim Bräuning ◽

Roland Brandl ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Functional Traits ◽

Biomass Production ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Ecosystem Change ◽

Mountain Ecosystems ◽

Abiotic Conditions ◽

Research Framework ◽

Tropical Mountain

AbstractTropical mountain ecosystems are threatened by climate and land-use changes. Their diversity and complexity make projections how they respond to environmental changes challenging. A suitable way are trait-based approaches, by distinguishing between response traits that determine the resistance of species to environmental changes and effect traits that are relevant for species' interactions, biotic processes, and ecosystem functions. The combination of those approaches with land surface models (LSM) linking the functional community composition to ecosystem functions provides new ways to project the response of ecosystems to environmental changes. With the interdisciplinary project RESPECT, we propose a research framework that uses a trait-based response-effect-framework (REF) to quantify relationships between abiotic conditions, the diversity of functional traits in communities, and associated biotic processes, informing a biodiversity-LSM. We apply the framework to a megadiverse tropical mountain forest. We use a plot design along an elevation and a land-use gradient to collect data on abiotic drivers, functional traits, and biotic processes. We integrate these data to build the biodiversity-LSM and illustrate how to test the model. REF results show that aboveground biomass production is not directly related to changing climatic conditions, but indirectly through associated changes in functional traits. Herbivory is directly related to changing abiotic conditions. The biodiversity-LSM informed by local functional trait and soil data improved the simulation of biomass production substantially. We conclude that local data, also derived from previous projects (platform Ecuador), are key elements of the research framework. We specify essential datasets to apply this framework to other mountain ecosystems.

Download Full-text