Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Aus­tralian and inter­na­tional nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions made a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the recent Muse­ums Aus­tralia National con­fer­ence, held at the Uni­ver­sity of Ade­laide from 24 to 28 Sep­tem­ber 2012. Sev­eral pre­sen­ta­tions demon­strated cur­rent ini­tia­tives in digi­ti­sa­tion of nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions, includ­ing reports on Atlas of Liv­ing Aus­tralia sup­ported projects.

A par­al­lel ses­sion chaired by Dr Den­nis Steven­son, New York Botanic Gar­dens, spot­lighted nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions, and dis­cussed their his­tory and con­tem­po­rary uses. In this ses­sion Stephen Forbes, Botan­i­cal Gar­dens of Ade­laide direc­tor, described the rich his­tory and essen­tial role of botanic gar­dens. His talk was illus­trated with images of gar­dens cul­ti­vated for research and plea­sure through­out his­tory, beyond their tra­di­tion­ally under­stood start­ing point dur­ing the Enlightenment.

In con­junc­tion with this, Pro­fes­sor Steve Don­nel­lan, South Aus­tralian Museum and Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fau­nal Col­lec­tions, spoke about the con­tem­po­rary uses of nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions. Pro­fes­sor Don­nel­lan talked about the advanced tech­nolo­gies that are increas­ingly allow­ing us to ‘peer inside’ the ani­mals kept in such col­lec­tions, expos­ing new infor­ma­tion about their genetic pro­files, life his­to­ries, ecol­ogy and the his­tor­i­cal record. He explained that appli­ca­tion of new tech­no­log­i­cal research tools to deep his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions in muse­ums is facil­i­tat­ing new dis­cov­er­ies and knowledge.

Genetic analy­sis of con­tem­po­rary and his­tor­i­cal spec­i­mens is encour­ag­ing new bio­di­ver­sity dis­cov­ery, includ­ing in groups of ani­mals pre­vi­ously con­sid­ered to be well-covered, and mak­ing pre­cise obser­va­tions pos­si­ble in analy­sis of cli­mate change. Advanced chem­i­cal analy­sis of his­toric spec­i­mens is also allow­ing sci­en­tists to ret­ro­spec­tively analyse envi­ron­men­tal and human impacts that have put cer­tain species in peril, and allowed fine grained analy­sis of tra­di­tional habi­tats of extant species. Pro­fes­sor Donel­lan high­lighted the impor­tance of con­tin­u­ing to build and main­tain our col­lec­tions that pro­vide such a valu­able sci­en­tific resource and his­toric record.

This con­fer­ence brought together rep­re­sen­ta­tives of nat­ural his­tory, social his­tory, art and cul­tural col­lec­tions, for an invig­o­rat­ing week of dis­cus­sion and infor­ma­tion shar­ing. The call for abstracts has opened for the next Muse­ums Aus­tralia con­fer­ence, to be held in Can­berra in May 2013.

The No spec­i­men left behind: mass dig­i­ti­za­tion of nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions spe­cial edi­tion of Zookeys pro­files and reflects on digi­ti­sa­tion projects from nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions around the world. It brings together arti­cles that explore digi­ti­sa­tion ini­tia­tives in a broad range of envi­ron­ments, includ­ing large ento­mo­log­i­cal col­lec­tions, ver­te­brate col­lec­tions, herbaria, botanic gar­dens and cit­i­zen sci­ence projects. Arti­cles describe meth­ods of cap­ture, doc­u­men­ta­tion and mobil­i­sa­tion of data, demon­strat­ing prac­tices that have matured rapidly in recent years.

Sev­eral arti­cles draw on ini­tia­tives led by OZCAM con­trib­u­tors, includ­ing the Aus­tralian Museum and the Aus­tralian National Insect Collection.

Our col­lec­tions hold enor­mous amounts of use­ful data, and the nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions com­mu­nity are get­ting bet­ter at access­ing and mobil­is­ing that data. The edi­tors com­ment that they “expect that in the next decade these data will become the new fron­tier for nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tion man­age­ment and research”.

Zookeys is com­pletely open access, and all arti­cles are freely avail­able at: http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/issue/209/

Media Release from the Global Bio­di­ver­sity Infor­mat­ics Con­fer­ence (GBIC), which was attended by Paul Fle­mons from the Aus­tralian Museum and rep­re­sen­ta­tive on OZCAM.

Pub­lic to play major role in mobi­liz­ing expanded range of data needed to pre­serve vital func­tions of life on Earth, con­fer­ence concludes.

Copen­hagen, Den­mark – 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 world from 2–4 July, iden­ti­fied crit­i­cal areas in which greater invest­ment and bet­ter coor­di­na­tion could give soci­ety much bet­ter, inno­v­a­tive tools to mon­i­tor and man­age bio­log­i­cal resources. These tools will be designed to sup­port vital func­tions such as food secu­rity, human health and more sus­tain­able eco­nomic development.

The over­all aim is to build global col­lab­o­ra­tion on bio­di­ver­sity obser­va­tion, unit­ing many part­ners and ini­tia­tives, capa­ble of detect­ing and enabling responses to short-term changes and long-term trends in bio­di­ver­sity and ecosys­tems. This col­lab­o­ra­tion will con­nect diverse sources of data on genetic vari­abil­ity, occur­rence and abun­dance of species, traits of organ­isms and many other fac­tors. It will address a wide range of pol­icy needs includ­ing the Aichi Bio­di­ver­sity Tar­gets agreed by gov­ern­ments in 2010 as part of a 10-year strate­gic plan to halt bio­di­ver­sity loss.

Don­ald Hobern, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Global Bio­di­ver­sity Infor­ma­tion Facil­ity (GBIF), host of the con­fer­ence said: “Infor­ma­tion net­works sup­port and per­me­ate nearly every aspect of our daily lives in areas such as bank­ing, com­merce and enter­tain­ment. We still do not have this kind of rich, globally-interconnected sys­tem for under­stand­ing and mon­i­tor­ing life on Earth.

“We know a lot about species, genet­ics, and ecol­ogy, but we can’t eas­ily put this infor­ma­tion together into a work­ing knowl­edge sys­tem. This con­fer­ence has given us a roadmap toward this goal.”

The capa­bil­i­ties dis­cussed by the par­tic­i­pants at GBIC, who came from a range of dis­ci­plines includ­ing bio­di­ver­sity sci­ence, pol­icy and infor­mat­ics, will now be devel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with the sci­ence and pol­icy com­mu­ni­ties into an out­look doc­u­ment. It will set pri­or­i­ties for bio­di­ver­sity infor­mat­ics for the com­ing decade with a view to estab­lish­ing an effec­tive and agile sys­tem of fore­cast and rapid response – equiv­a­lent to weather fore­cast­ing or earth­quake detection.

A num­ber of spe­cific areas were iden­ti­fied for devel­op­ment in the out­look, each to include achiev­able out­comes over a five to ten year time­line, build­ing on and inte­grat­ing many exist­ing ini­tia­tives and con­tribut­ing to the over­all vision of a global bio­di­ver­sity intel­li­gence sys­tem. They include:

• Mak­ing best use of the huge poten­tial for the pub­lic to become part of a global bio­di­ver­sity knowl­edge net­work as both con­trib­u­tors and ben­e­fi­cia­ries, using lat­est tech­nolo­gies, social net­works and local/indigenous knowledge;
• Cap­tur­ing through all avail­able tech­nolo­gies the com­plex­ity of inter­ac­tions among species – for exam­ple predators/prey, parasites/hosts and pol­li­na­tors – as well as their traits. The tech­nolo­gies will include acoustic mon­i­tor­ing and remote sens­ing, and will help analyse these inter­ac­tions to estab­lish their impor­tance in pro­vid­ing eco­log­i­cal ser­vices to people;
• Greatly improv­ing the capa­bil­ity to pro­vide pre­dic­tive mod­el­ling across dif­fer­ent scales, esti­mat­ing the impact of spe­cific envi­ron­men­tal changes on bio­di­ver­sity for any point on Earth, and the result­ing dis­rup­tion of eco­log­i­cal ser­vices to peo­ple and communities;
• Expand­ing the cur­rent net­work of linked data from species names and museum col­lec­tions up to satel­lite images of ecosys­tems and down to DNA in micro-organisms;
• Shin­ing a light on hith­erto hid­den lay­ers of bio­di­ver­sity, for exam­ple using gene sequenc­ing capa­bil­i­ties to under­stand the mil­lions of kinds of microbes inhab­it­ing the air, oceans, soils and higher organ­isms through­out the world, and their role in con­trol­ling the life sup­port sys­tems of the planet.

Don­ald Hobern con­tin­ued: “Over the last quar­ter cen­tury, thou­sands of tal­ented peo­ple have been work­ing hard to bring essen­tial bio­di­ver­sity data onto the web. Much has already been achieved or is under development.

“GBIC has rein­forced how impor­tant these activ­i­ties are, and at the same time has out­lined a path for us to build from where we are and deliver a rich globally-connected sys­tem for under­stand­ing and mon­i­tor­ing mul­ti­ple aspects of biodiversity.

“I want to thank the atten­dees for work­ing so hard over the last few days and encour­age all oth­ers with an inter­est in bio­di­ver­sity infor­mat­ics to respond to the upcom­ing out­look doc­u­ment, and help to refine this as a shared vision.”

Erick Mata, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life and also a mem­ber of the GBIC orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, added: “The five to ten year research and devel­op­ment roadmap that emerged from our dis­cus­sions in Copen­hagen will be a liv­ing doc­u­ment. We want researchers, pol­icy mak­ers and the gen­eral pub­lic with inter­est in bio­di­ver­sity to con­tribute their ideas and get involved in implementation.”

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact:
Tim Hirsch
GBIF Sec­re­tariat
thirsch@gbif.org

The May 2011 meet­ing of the FCIG com­mit­tee in Ade­laide agreed on and approved a revised schema for use by the OZCAM com­mu­nity. This schema is dated 26_07_2011.It is impor­tant to note that the “OZCAM Schema” is actu­ally a sub­set of rec­om­mended and manda­tory fields from the Dar­win Core Schema (DwC).

The table below shows the num­ber of records being pro­vided by each insti­tu­tion by the col­lec­tions they are releas­ing data for, at 28/2/2011.

The FCIG com­mit­tee has agreed on and approved a schema for use by the OZCAM com­mu­nity. This schema is dated 31_08_2010.

The Fau­nal Col­lec­tions Infor­mat­ics Group (FCIG), a sub­com­mit­tee of the Coun­cil of Heads of Aus­tralian Fauna Col­lec­tions, and pub­lish­ers of the OZCAM web­site, held a meet­ing in Bris­bane, at the Queens­land Museum, over three days in early May 2010. The meet­ing focussed on the new FCIG and CHAFC web sites, and about the new ver­sion of the OZCAM por­tal, which pro­vides access to the data from all FCIG mem­ber institutions.

The meet­ing was attended by FCIG rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Queens­land Museum, the Aus­tralian National Insect Col­lec­tion, the Aus­tralian National Wildlife Col­lec­tion, the Aus­tralian Museum, Museum Vic­to­ria, the Tas­man­ian Museum and Art Gallery, the South Aus­tralian Museum and the West­ern Aus­tralian Museum. Vis­i­tors from the Atlas of Liv­ing Aus­tralia (ALA) and the Herbar­ium Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems COM­mit­tee also attended.

As part of this meet­ing, there were con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion about how to serve data to the OZCAM hub, includ­ing the new Dar­win Core schema from TDWG. This schema will be imple­mented by the insti­tu­tions — with some addi­tional fields — over the com­ing months. The insti­tu­tions will also focus on deliv­er­ing data from par­tic­u­lar tax­o­nomic groups that have been requested by the ALA.

In the com­ing months, FCIG mem­bers will keep this news feed up to date with our progress. Please use the con­tact page to ask any questions!