The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international open data infrastructure, funded by governments. It allows anyone, anywhere to access data about all types of life on Earth, shared across national boundaries via the Internet. By encouraging and helping institutions to publish data according to common standards, GBIF enables research not possible before, and informs better decisions to conserveand sustainably use the biological resources of the planet. GBIF operates through a network of nodes, coordinating the biodiversity information facilities of Participant countries and organizations, collaborating with each other and the Secretariat to share skills, experiences and technical capacity.
Pensoft , the publisher that publishes the successful open-access journal in taxonomy, Zookeys, has recently launched a new journal entitled ' Biodiversity Data Journal' . On its website, it states its purpose and scope: "Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) is a community peer-reviewed, open-access, comprehensive online platform, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind . All structural elements of the articles – text, morphological descriptions, occurrences, data tables, etc. – will be treated and stored as DATA . The journal will publish papers in biodiversity science containing taxonomic, floristic/faunistic, morphological, genomic, phylogenetic, ecological or environmental data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world with no lower or upper limit to manuscript size ." Without a doubt, biodiversity and data are two hot terms. 'Biodiversity data' sounds quite exciting too. The BDJ seems an interesting journal. I look forward to reading articles published in this new journal (starting Nov 2012, see leaflet below). I do have an idea that I think can be turned into a publication for this journal. I would like to publish images of museum collections. Our lab has been taking images of drawers and drawers of specimens of reduviids in more than 20 museums. These are primarily for us to have a record of specimens in museums. We took these images during visits to museums. One might ask, why don't you just sort and identify the specimens on site? Well, we may not always have the time or the taxonomic expertise. Reduviidae is a large family with ~7,000 species. No one knows all the species. Museum visits are usually not more than a few days and one is preoccupied with other projects. Instead of sorting and identifying the specimens on site, we take images of drawers or unit trays. We share those images in the lab or with other reduviid colleagues. If somebody wants to do a revision of a certain group, this person can go to our museum image collection and find out what is available in which museum. Then one can highlight the desirable specimens. This will help the curator or collection manager at the loaning museum, especially when it comes to unsorted, poorly identified material, say, those sorted only to order level. You can also read several recently published papers on data sharing: TREE ( 1 , 2 ) , Bioscience, and Conservation Letters . http://gyz.weebly.com/2/post/2012/10/biodiversity-data-museum-virtual-collection.html
Many of us have heard of biodiversity hotspots (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity_hotspot ). However, not all experts agree with such a simplistic approach. Critiques of Hotspots The high profile of the biodiversity hotspots approach has resulted in considerable criticism. Papers such as Kareiva Marvier (2003; http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/courses/OCN310/OCN310_Spring2011/Kareiva_Marvier_03_biodiversity.pdf ) have argued that the biodiversity hotspots: Do not adequately represent other forms of species richness (e.g. total species richness or threatened species richness). Do not adequately represent taxa other than vascular plants (e.g. vertebrates, or fungi). Do not protect smaller scale richness hotspots. Do not make allowances for changing land use patterns. Hotspots represent regions that have experienced considerable habitat loss, but this does not mean they are experiencing ongoing habitat loss. On the other hand, regions that are relatively intact (e.g. the Amazon Basin ) have experienced relatively little land loss, but are currently losing habitat at tremendous rates. Do not protect ecosystem services Do not consider phylogenetic diversity . A recent series of papers has pointed out that biodiversity hotspots (and many other priority region sets) do not address the concept of cost . The purpose of biodiversity hotspots is not simply to identify regions that are of high biodiversity value, but to prioritize conservation spending. The regions identified include regions in the developed world (e.g. the California Floristic Province ), alongside regions in the developing world (e.g. Madagascar ). The cost of land is likely to vary between these regions by an order of magnitude or more, but the biodiversity hotspots do not consider the conservation importance of this difference. Do you have something to say about this?
Biodiversity in a complex world: consolidation and progress in functional biodiversity research 从 Ecology Letters 作者： Helmut Hillebrand, Birte Matthiessen The global decline of biodiversity caused by human domination of ecosystems worldwide is supposed to alter important process rates and state variables in these ecosystems. However, there is considerable debate on the prevalence and importance of biodiversity effects on ecosystem function (BDEF). Here, we argue that much of the debate stems from two major shortcomings. First, most studies do not directly link the traits leading to increased or decreased function to the traits needed for species coexistence and dominance. We argue that implementing a trait-based approach and broadening the perception of diversity to include trait dissimilarity or trait divergence will result in more realistic predictions on the consequences of altered biodiversity. Second, the empirical and theoretical studies do not reflect the complexity of natural ecosystems, which makes it difficult to transfer the results to natural situations of species loss. We review how different aspects of complexity (trophic structure, multifunctionality, spatial or temporal heterogeneity, and spatial population dynamics) alter our perception of BDEF. We propose future research avenues concisely testing whether acknowledging this complexity will strengthen the observed biodiversity effects. Finally, we propose that a major future task is to disentangle biodiversity effects on ecosystem function from direct changes in function due to human alterations of abiotic constraints. Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122659286/abstract?CRETRY=1SRETRY=0
标签: Biodiversity
