2019

Science Review

An annual compilation ofresearch data uses enabled by2

3

Foreword
About the Science Review

Demonstrating the power of free and open biodiversity data for all
GBIF-mediated data is everyone’s data. It
represents the accumulation of efforts—fromsmall university collections to large, globally
recognized museum research institutions, fromcitizen scientist initiatives run on smartphone
to the latest metagenomic studies. The powerof these efforts is compounded when data isbrought together to be free and open for all to use.
The GBIF 2019 Science Review demonstrates
some of the power of a community working
together. Take, for example, a research project
by Watcharamongkoi et al. at the University of
Sheffield in the United Kingdom and funded by theThailand government studied C4 photosynthesis
evolution (p. 23). They used nearly 15 million
occurrence records from the GBIF network toinvestigate potential geographic boundary limits
for C4 photosynthetic plants. The impressive
aspect is that these records came from 1,453
individual datasets, not just from large European
and North American herbaria, but also frominstitutions in Benin, Colombia, Brazil, Estonia,
Australia and Japan (https://doi.org/10.15468/
dl.krwqzk). Global studies of this kind would not
be possible without a GBIF.

This year’s Review also highlights several key
studies with broad societal implications that
relied on similar uses of data from thousandsof sources. Possibly the most important
link revealed through our literature tracking
programme this year is the role that GBIFmediated data played in the biodiversity-related
assessments of the latest Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change Special Report. The
report rightfully received a lot of media publicity
for its high-profile call to action, though few will
have known at the time that the report relies
heavily on work (Warren et al.—see p. 28)
based directly on the analysis of 385 million
occurrences from more than 5,400 datasets fromthe GBIF network.
These global analyses will become more common
with increasing amounts of data available throughGBIF. Through our work to improve the culture andpractice of research data citation, we aim to give
credit to the organizations that share data andthe professionals who perform the work. We are
deeply grateful for all that you do.

JOE MILLER
GBIF Executive Secretary
July 2019

The GBIF Science Review provides an annual survey
drawn from the Secretariat’s ongoing literature
tracking programme, which identifies researchuses and citations of biodiversity information
accessed through GBIF’s global infrastructure. The
peer-reviewed articles summarized in the following
pages offer a partial but instructive view of research
investigations supported and enabled by free andopen access to biodiversity data from the GBIF
network.
We have labelled open-access scientific articles
using the symbol a. We feel this step serves thoseinterested in reading the research at a time ofchanging institutional journal subscriptions.
The comprehensive list of this year’s uses (aswell as current and previous ones) is separate
from the printed version of the Science Review

and is available exclusively through the online
literature index at https://www.gbif.org/resource/
search?contentType=literature.
As in previous years, the categories used here areintended to help readers navigate the major subject
areas of GBIF-assisted research, despite the factthat some papers may cut across multiple topics.
For clarity’s sake, articles appear under only one
category in the Review. Countries assigned to authors
are based on the location of the institutions identified
in the author information, while funding information
included for the highlighted papers draws upon thepapers’ acknowledgements.
Those interested in sharing research uses that
may have escaped our attention can write to us atcommunication@gbif.org.

CONTENTS
Uses and trends����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Biodiversity and human health��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6
Biodiversity data������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
Biodiversity science������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 14
Ecology, evolution, behaviour and systematics��������������������������������������������������������20

Cover photo:
Cribraria purpurea available at https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/2006052851. Photo taken by Ricardo Arredondo T.
and published through GBIF.org via iNaturalist Research-grade Observations. Licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
Rights:The GBIF Science Review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
Citation:
GBIF Secretariat. (2019). GBIF Science Review 2019. https://doi.org/10.15468/QXXG-7K93

Ecosystem services�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������26
Impacts of climate change��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28
Invasive alien species���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 32
Conservation and food security������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 36

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Uses and trends

NUMBER OF ARTICLES WITH AUTHORS BY COUNTRY/ISLAND/TERRITORY

These visualizations of the use of GBIF-mediated data serve to show not just the growing number ofpeer-reviewed publications appearing each year, but also the increasing geographic distribution of
institutions hosting authors who apply the data in their research articles. Each trend highlights the
GBIF network’s widening sphere of influence and impact on scientific research related to the biologicaldomain.

ANNUAL NUMBER OF PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES USING GBIF-MEDIATED DATA

2019

744 (projected)

2018

675
696

2017
438

2016
407

2015
350

2014
249

2013

229

2012
169

2011

205
83
73
72
65
59
53
47
44
30
29
28
25
24
23
19
18
17
16
13
12
11
10
9
7
6
5
4
3
2

148

2010

1

89

2009
52

2008
0

250

500

United States
Brazilcountries, islands &Mexicoterritories with authors who
China • United Kingdom
used GBIF-mediated dataSpainin peer-reviewed papers
Australia
published in 2018
Germany
CanadaFranceItaly
Colombia
Switzerland
New ZealandSweden59
84
Argentina • Denmark
Chile
154
491
Norway • Russia • South Africa
ProportionandnumberBelgiumof papers by authors
India • Netherlands • Portugal
within GBIF regions
Peru
252
Japan
Austria
270
FinlandEcuador • Poland • Taiwan
South Korea • Iran
Czechia • Ireland • Kenya
Cameroon • Costa Rica • Indonesia • Thailand
Benin • Egypt • Turkey
Bosnia & Herzegovina • Estonia • Morocco • Nepal • Nigeria • Panama • Saudi Arabia
Croatia • Ghana • Hong Kong • Iraq • Israel • Madagascar • Mozambique • Pakistan
Romania • Singapore • Suriname • Viet Nam
Algeria • Angola • Bangladesh • Bhutan • Bolivia • Bulgaria • Côte d’Ivoire
El Salvador • Ethiopia • Eswatini • Falkland Islands (Malvinas) • French Guiana
Georgia • Greece • Guatemala • Guyana • Honduras • Hungary • Iceland • Jamaica
Libya • Lithuania • Malaysia • Mauritius • Mongolia • Philippines • Puerto Rico •Serbia • Slovenia • Togo • Uganda • Ukraine • Uruguay • Venezuela • Zimbabwe

GBIF Regions

98

37+21+191265K

Asia

AfricaEuropeLatin America

North America

Oceania67

Biodiversity and human health

Since the study was published, Mark was approached
by a vaccine consultant in Germany who wanted tounderstand if the results of the study could help themin their work.

The results of the study showed high risk of disease
in a combined area of near 3 million sq. km, or 19 percent of the total study area—including several risk
hot spots in South India, in which no outbreak had
previous occurred.

“They’re trying to develop a vaccine, figure out how
many vaccines to develop and who to target. They
were talking about vaccine stockpiles, but I had to
explain that I am a geographer. I know nothing about
vaccine stockpiles! I told them to target the people
at highest risk—the people who work in date palm
cultivation. If you’re going to do a vaccine, target themfirst.”

On 19 May 2018—within weeks of Mark andcolleagues submitting their paper—the Indian
Government’s National Centre for Disease Control andthe World Health Organization reported a NiV disease
outbreak from Kozhikode district of Kerala, India—thefirst in South India. Within less than two weeks 18
people had contracted the disease and 17 were dead.
“We were in the process of submitting the final edits
when the outbreak in Kerala took place. On the one
hand, it’s very exciting to see that your models
can make accurate predictions, but knowing theconsequences of these outbreaks puts an immediate
dampener on your excitement.”
PTEROPUS GIGANTEUS BY HEMANT KUMAR HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1092888502 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Data story FLYING FOXES PREDICT NIPAH VIRUS TRANSMISSION RISKHaving completed his PhD at TSU, Mark is now working
for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, where he will be working on
similar medical geography modelling with a focus onbacterial diseases.
a Deka M and Morshed N (2018) Mapping Disease
Transmission Risk of Nipah Virus in South and Southeast
Asia. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease. MDPI AG
3(2): 57. Available at:https://doi.org/10.3390/tropicalmed3020057
Author country/area: United States
Research funding: None listed

DATA USED: 47,942 SPECIES OCCURRENCES“We were in the process of submitting the final
edits when the outbreak in Kerala took place.
On the one hand, it’s very exciting to see thatyou models can make accurate predictions,but knowing the consequences of theseoutbreaks puts an immediate dampener on yourexcitement.”—Mark Deka, CDC
In early May of 2018, Texas State University (TSU)
alumnus Mark Deka submitted a study modelling
Nipah virus (NiV) infection risk in South and Southeast
Asia for publication in the journal Tropical Medicine andInfectious Disease. Part of his PhD, the paper had beenin the works for nearly a year and a half.

communicable diseases for hosts and susceptible
populations”, says Deka, who came to Texas in 2015
and started his career working on tick-borne diseases.
It was during this time he started looking into using
GBIF-mediated data for creating models for his
research. This proved useful when he later turned toNiV research.
A relative of the Hendra virus that takes its name from
the Malaysian village in which it was first isolated
from pigs, the NiV causes encephalitis in infectedorganisms. Flying foxes (Pteropus sp.) are thepresumed wildlife reservoir of NiV, and consumption of
raw date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) sap contaminatedwith Pteropus urine or saliva is believed to be an
important risk factor.

Working in the area of medical geography, Mark—originally from Cleveland, Ohio—was interested
in vector-borne diseases and the geospatial andgeographic components of disease transmission.

Mark’s study combined biosurveillance data with
GBIF-mediated Pteropus occurrences to createmodels mapping infection risk hot spots in Southand Southeast Asia while identifying environmental
features associated with increased risk.

“A lot of people don’t realize the role of geography
and spatial gradients in relation to distribution of“The data from GBIF.org played a huge role. Whilesome people just build a single model to show human

NIPAH VIRUS DISEASE TRANSMISSION RISK IN BANGLADESH AND INDIA WITH UPDATED HUMAN CASE LOCATIONS FROM MAY 2018.
FIGURE FROM DEKA M AND MORSHED N (2018) HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3390/TROPICALMED3020057 (CC BY 4.0)

human healthtransmission cases, we were interested in mapping
the overlap between several models and alsomeasuring it. The occurrence data for the flying foxes
was very important, and there was a lot of it, too!”

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MAPPING GLOBAL VULNERABILITY TO VENOMOUSSNAKEBITESa Longbottom J, Shearer FM, Devine M, Alcoba G,
Chappuis F, Weiss DJ, Ray SE, Ray N, Warrell DA, Ruiz deCastañeda R, Williams DJ, Hay SI and Pigott DM (2018)
Vulnerability to snakebite envenoming: a global mapping of
hotspots. The Lancet. Elsevier BV 392(10148): 673–684.
Available at:https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(18)31224-8
Author countries/areas: Australia, Switzerland,
United Kingdom, United States
Research funding: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

As many as 138,000 people die from venomous
snakebites every year. Primarily affecting poor rural
populations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, snakebite
is an overlooked cause of mortality, also affecting
livestock causing a burden on already impoverishedcommunities.
Aiming to identify the most vulnerable populations
at risk of snakebite, researchers mapped the
distributions of 278 venomous snakes dangerous
to humans, producing high resolution range maps
for 179 species using GBIF-mediated occurrences.
They further triangulated these data with metricsof antivenom availability, access to healthcare andefficacy of medical interventions.
While nearly seven billion people live within range ofareas inhabited by snakes, the study identified 166
million living in areas with at least one venomous
snake and more than 3 hours from urban centres withhealthcare.
Within the lowest three deciles of healthcare quality,
the authors highlight Angola, Pakistan, Indonesia,
Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as
hotspots of vulnerable populations, with more than 92
million people at risk.

BITING AQUATIC INSECTS INVOLVED IN
TRANSMISSION OF BURULI ULCER
a Cano J, Rodríguez A, Simpson H, Tabah EN, Gómez JF
and Pullan RL (2018) Modelling the spatial distribution of
aquatic insects (Order Hemiptera) potentially involvedin the transmission of Mycobacterium ulcerans in Africa.
Parasites & Vectors. Springer Nature 11(1). Available at:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-018-3066-3
Author country/area: Cameroon, Spain, United Kingdom
Research funding: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Rapidly emerging in West Africa, Buruli ulcer (BU), is
the third most common mycobacteriosis in humans
causing chronic debilitating disease, mainly affecting

the skin and sometimes bone.
Published in Parasites & Vectors, this study explores
the distribution of biting aquatic insects, suggested
as potential vectors of Mycobacterium ulcerans, thecausative agent of the disease. Using GBIF-mediatedoccurrences of six hemipteran families combinedwith records from extensive literature searches, theauthors produced ensemble consensus distributions
mapping the potential ranges of the insect families.
By overlaying the predictive models and maps of
BU-endemic communities, the study shows that allaffected areas are suitable for at least one hemipteranfamily. In Cameroon, they show suitability for two
families, whereas BU-areas in Ghana are suitable forall six investigated families.
Combined with existing pathophysiologicalknowledge, these findings strongly supportconsidering the presence of biting aquatic insects as arisk factor in BU endemic areas.

REFINING TICK DISTRIBUTION MODELS USINGHOST CONTACT RATESConsidering 29 rodents and 78 passerine birds theauthors predict the highest contact rates between thetick and its hosts in large regions of Central Europe,
UK and southern Scandinavia, while analysis of
Artiodactyla (even-toed ungulates) revealed an evenlarger contact area, potentially suggesting a more
important role as tick hosts.

about the geographic spread of snakebite risk.

MAPPING THE RISK OF SNAKEBITES IN ECUADOR

The models suggest a low risk in the central Andean
region, while risk in the adjacent coastal andAmazonian regions is high, findings that confirm
previous reports of snakebites. Applying these results
to a map of local rural areas, the authors identified
187 densely populated communities with high risk ofsnakebites.

DATA USED: 9,111 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Yañez-Arenas C, Díaz-Gamboa L, Patrón-Rivero C,
López-Reyes K and Chiappa-Carrara X (2018) Estimating
geographic patterns of ophidism risk in Ecuador.
Neotropical Biodiversity. Informa UK Limited 4(1): 55–61.
Available at:https://doi.org/10.1080/23766808.2018.1454762
Author countries/areas: Mexico
Research funding: National Council of Science andTechnology (MX)Ophidism, the medical term for poisoning from snake
venom, is a serious public health issue, especiallyin the tropics. While social and temporal aspects ofsnakebites have been studied, not much is known

With 39 venomous snakes, Ecuador’s species richness
is among the highest in the world. As assessmentof actual bite rates are expensive at a large scale,this study takes a correlative approach, mapping
the risk of snakebites by modelling GBIF-mediatedoccurrences of medically relevant species.

While the study doesn’t use actual incidence datain the models, it represents significant progress insnakebite risk assessments. The authors call for the
implementation of a national snakebite reporting
system to improve understanding of the patterns of
ophidism in Ecuador.

DATA USED: 11,000,000 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Estrada-Peña A, Adkin A, Bertolini S, Cook C, Crescio
MI, Grosbois V, Horigan V, Ip S, Leger A, Mastrantonio G,
Maurella C, de Nardi M, Ru G, Simons R, Snary E, Staerk K,
Taylor R and Smith GC (2018) Evaluating a mixed abiotic–
biotic model for the distribution and host contact rates ofan arthropod vector of pathogens: An example with Ixodes
ricinus (Ixodidae). Microbial Risk Analysis. Elsevier BV.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mran.2018.12.001
Author country/area: France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland,
United Kingdom
Research funding: Ministry of Health (IT)When modelling the distribution of a species
of interest, covariates often include abiotic
climatic measurements, such as temperature andprecipitation. Interactions with other species,
however, can also affect a species’ distribution andshould be considered.
One such interaction—between pathogen-carrying
ticks and their vertebrate hosts—is the focus of thisstudy in which researchers used remote-sensed
environmental data combined with occurrence data
sourced from GBIF and literature to assess the impact
of host availability of the distribution of an arthropod
vector—the castor bean tick (Ixodes ricinus),
responsible for transmitting pathogens causing Lyme
disease and tick-borne encephalitis.

TROPIDOLAEMUS SUBANNULATUS BY DANOLSEN HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1847602565 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

See all Biodiversity and human health citations at GBIF.org

human healthhuman health

DATA USED: 51,952 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

9

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11

NODDB: A GLOBAL DATABASE OF ROOT-SYMBIOTIC
PLANTS

Biodiversity data

DATA USED: 156,200,298 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Author countries/areas: Estonia
Research funding: Estonian Science Foundation, Estonian
Ministry of Education and Research, European Union

In the battle for nutrients some plants have evolved
symbiotic relationships with microorganisms, suchas mychorrhizal fungi and nitrogen(N)-fixing bacteriathat provide water and minerals in return for sugars.
This type of association is found in the roots of mostlegume species and is common in nitrogen-limited
ecosystems.

PEMPHERIS AFFINIS BY PINCETCZY HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1993735848 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

BIOTIME: A DATABASE OF BIODIVERSITY TIMESERIES FOR THE ANTHROPOCENEDATA USED: 446,726 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Dornelas M et al (2018) BioTIME: A database of
biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene. Global
Ecology and Biogeography. Wiley 27(7): 760–786.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12729
Author countries/areas: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,
Chile, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland,
Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, New
Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Netherlands, United
Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam
Research funding: California Department of Fish and Game,
German Academic Exchange Service, National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development (BR), Norwegian
Research Council, Russell Sage Foundation, Wellcome Trust,
Vulcan, Foundation for Research Support of the State ofSão Paulo, Research Support Foundation for the State of
Rio de Janeiro, Department of Conservation (NZ), Natural
Environment Research Council (UK), National Science
Foundation (US), ArcticNet, H2020 European ResearchCouncilOne of the major challenges of our time is to monitor
and measure changes in biodiversity, especially witha warming climate and other human-induced changes

to the natural environment. With recent evidence ofalarming biodiversity losses, high quality biodiversity
data is crucial.
To facilitate research in the area, a group of
271 scientists from 35 countries in the BioTIME
consortium spent almost eight years collecting dataon species abundance records for assemblages
sampled over time with consistent methodologies.
Compiling data from 361 studies carried out from
1874 to 2016—some sourced from GBIF.org—BioTIME
consists of more than eight million records acrossmore than 547,000 unique locations spanning
21 ecoregions and covering 44,440 taxa. The full
database is freely available for download in several
formats.
Providing instructions on how to download and re-use
the BioTIME database, the authors aim to encourageother researchers to interact with the data, contributeto future releases and also promote an improved data
citation culture.

Despite playing an important role in agroforestry soil
fertility, data on N-fixation in plants is scattered. In
this paper, researchers from Estonia compile andcurate a new database of root-symbiotic plants basedon several metastudies and databases. For eachgenus, they provide details of the microorganism
involved in the mutualism and how many species thathave positive reports of N-fixation. The database,
NodDB, named after bacteria-containing root nodules,
includes data on 590 verified genera and also 234
likely candidates based on phylogenetic relationships.

This paper by Spanish researchers in Ecological
Indicators presents KnowBR—a novel software thatassesses survey completeness across a territory ofinterest. Taking unfiltered georeferenced data from asource of primary biodiversity information, KnowBR
calculates the completeness of a geographical unit–acell or a polygon, as defined by the user–based on
slopes of species accumulation curves. This curve
describes the relationship between number of species
and the total number of records (a surrogate survey
effort).
To demonstrate the tool, the authors used a downloadof all bees (superfamily Apoidea) from GBIF.org
to assess survey completeness at a one degree
resolution. Their analysis revealed both generalscarceness and bias of data, showing that only 18 percent of terrestrial cells have georeferenced data forbees and that only nine per cent of species have morethan 10 records. The accumulation curve slopes were
below 0.01 (i.e. one species per 100 records) in lessthan one per cent cells. The tool identified the highest
number of well-surveyed cells western North America,
central and nothern Europe, as well as Australia.

PREDICTING WILDLIFE POPULATION TRENDS
USING CITIZEN SCIENCE DATADATA USED: 822,459 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Using GBIF-mediated occurrences the authors
demonstrate the richness of N-fixing plants relative
to all vascular plants globally, showing the highest
richness in savanna and semi-desert biomes, notsurprisingly where N supply is most limited.

a Callcutt K, Croft S and Smith GC (2018) Predicting
population trends using citizen science data: do
subsampling methods produce reliable estimates for
mammals? European Journal of Wildlife Research. Springer
Science and Business Media LLC 64(3).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-018-1189-7

KNOWBR: MAPPING GEOGRAPHICAL VARIATION OF
BIODIVERSITY SURVEY EFFORT

Author countries/areas: United Kingdom
Research funding: None listed

DATA USED: 137,809 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Population trends are an important tool in wildlife
management and conservation. However, obtaining
data can be impractical and expensive. Citizen
science observations on the other hand are growing,
but can they be used to quantify changes in wildlife
populations accurately?

Lobo JM, Hortal J, Yela JL, Millán A, Sánchez-Fernández D,
García-Roselló E, González-Dacosta J, Heine J, GonzálezVilas L and Guisande C (2018) KnowBR: An application
to map the geographical variation of survey effort andidentify well-surveyed areas from biodiversity databases.
Ecological Indicators. Elsevier BV 91: 241–248.Available
at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.03.077
Author countries/areas: Spain
Research funding: Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia eInnovación, Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Cultura,
Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha

The apparent lack of occurrence of a given species
doesn’t necessarily reflect its actual absence, but
could also be explained by insufficent survey effort.

Focused on terrestrial mammals in the United
Kingdom, this study used GBIF-mediated occurrencesof 33 species from two periods in time to calculatechanges in populations. With increasing surveying
efforts over time, the author used subsamples tonormalize the data from the two periods.
While the predicted trends for some species were inagreement with other studies, more than 80 per centbiodiversity data

Tedersoo L, Laanisto L, Rahimlou S, Toussaint A, Hallikma
T and Pärtel M (2018) Global database of plants with rootsymbiotic nitrogen fixation: NodDB. Journal of Vegetation
Science. Wiley 29(3): 560–568.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.12627

Such unknown bias can lead to unreliable results indownstream analyses, if unaddressed.

12

In order to use citizen science data for predicting
population trends, the study concludes that suchbiases must be addressed. The authors suggest
normalization against higher taxa observations,an approach also employed in the GBIF-developed
relative observation trends tool
(https://www.gbif.org/tools/observation-trends).

BUSES AND HOTELS, NOT NATURAL WILDNESS,
DRIVE WILDLIFE WATCHERSDATA USED: 333,105 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Mancini F, Coghill GM and Lusseau D (2018) Quantifying
wildlife watchers’ preferences to investigate the overlap
between recreational and conservation value of naturalareas. Journal of Applied Ecology. Wiley 56(2): 387–397.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13274
Author countries/areas: United Kingdom
Research funding: University of Aberdeen

Offering physical and mental benefits to humans,
recreation is a key cultural ecosystem service
provided by nature. But what besides beauty andnaturalness drives us to a specific destination for
hiking and wildlife watching—and does conservation
value translate into recreational value?
In this study, researchers from the University ofAberdeen used photographs posted to Flickr toquantify wildlife watching activities in Scotland.
Combined with data on infrastructure, environment,
protected areas, and species richness, as derived
from GBIF-mediated occurrences, the authors
analysed recreational activities at 10x10 km
resolution to identify predicting variables.
Their results show that while wildlife watching is only
slightly associated with the presence of a protected
area, infrastructure, such as tourist accommodation
and bus stations, plays a far larger role. In areas withgood infrastructure, the most important predictor of
wildlife watching is the number of species present.
The study shows that wildlife watchers in generalprefer easily-accessible, highly transformed
landscapes to wild ecosystems and protected areas.

AN UPDATED MAMMAL CHECKLIST OF ANGOLADATA USED: 15,782 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Taylor PJ, Neef G, Keith M, Weier S, Monadjem A and Parker
DM (2018) Tapping into technology and the biodiversity
informatics revolution: updated terrestrial mammal listof Angola, with new records from the Okavango Basin.
ZooKeys. Pensoft Publishers 779: 51–88.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.778.25964

biodiversity data

biodiversity data

were inconsistent with population trends in publishedliterature. The authors point to spatial clustering due
to an increase in smartphone wildlife tracking as apossible cause.

13

Author countries/areas: Eswatini, South Africa
Research funding: National Geographic Society

One of the most recent members of the GBIF network,
Angola, has been largely overlooked in recent surveys
of mammals. Researchers responsible for theambitious African Mammal Project carried out in the
1960s and 70s by the Smithsonian Institution did noteven go to Angola. Due to the late 20th century periodof civil war, mammalian research in the country was
also largely neglected.
To redress this, a new study compiles all available
mammalian records in Angola from GBIF and publishedliterature. In addition, the authors add records fromtwo bat surveys and a camera-trapping survey oflarger mammals—both carried out between 2013
and 2017 in the poorly surveyed Okavango River
catchment area of the Angolan central highlands.
GBIF-mediated records covered 245 species while
records from the literature and the field work added
30 species, totalling 275 mammals, an increase of
52 species since the latest exhaustive survey from1941. New species added include rusty pipistrelle(Pipistrellus rusticus), lesser dwarf shrew (Suncus
varilla), Setzer’s mouse (Mus setzeri) and Woosnam’s
broad-faced mouse (Zelotomys woosnami).

ASSESSING THE COVERAGE AND QUALITY OF
GLOBAL TREE OCCURRENCE DATADATA USED: 36,000,000 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Serra-Diaz JM, Enquist BJ, Maitner B, Merow C andSvenning J-C (2017) Big data of tree species distributions:
how big and how good? Forest Ecosystems. Springer
Nature 4(1). Available at:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40663-017-0120-0

CERCOPITHECUS MITIS BY LUIS QUERIDO HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1831227285 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

data from five major aggregators, including GBIF. The
authors develop a workflow to integrate and control
data quality of species occurrences intended forspecies distribution modelling.
They identify 49,206 species in the data, representing
almost 85 per cent of all known species. Amongthe 36 million occurrence records, 17 per centare deemed high quality, however, only 15,140
species have enough high quality records to perform
species distribution modelling. The majority ofquality concerns among remaining records relate to
duplicates and lacking coordinates.
The study finds that spatial coverage is high in Europe,
North America and Australia, while large gaps still
exist in key biodiverse regions such as South-East
Asia and central Africa.

Author countries/areas: Denmark, United States
Research funding: Danish Council for Independent Research,
US Division of Biological Infrastructure

INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE OF TERRESTRIAL
MAMMALS OF MOZAMBIQUE

Around 60,000 species of trees are known andthanks to researchers, museums, herbaria andcitizen science programmes, a very large amount ofprimary biodiversity data exists on the world’s tree
populations.

a Neves IQ, Da Luz Mathias M and Bastos-Silveira
C (2018) The terrestrial mammals of Mozambique:Integrating dispersed biodiversity data. Bothalia, 48(1).
AOSIS. Available at:https://doi.org/10.4102/abc.v48i1.2330

This study sets out to assess the geographicalcoverage and quality of available tree occurrence

DATA USED: 6,607 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Author countries/areas: Portugal
Research funding: None listed

A comprehensive synopsis of mammals in
Mozambique was published in 1976 listing 190
terrestrial species. Up-to-date knowledge of
biodiversity is, however, important to conservationand management efforts, and political instability
in the country during previous decades has madeprogress difficult.
Aimed at contributing to a more profound knowledgeof Mozambican fauna, researchers compiled andcurated more than 17,000 occurrence records from
GBIF, national history museums, survey reports andliterature to create an updated checklist of terrestrial
mammalian species in the country.
They categorized species by number of observations
and also collectors/observers to distinguishquestionable occurrences. Their final list contains
217 species—from 14 orders, 39 families and 133
genera—accounting for 71 per cent of all species insouthern African region.
While estimating total richness, the authors predictthat their checklist is 93.5 per cent complete. When
compared to neighbouring countries, however, they
acknowledge that there might still be a considerable
number of species unaccounted for, suggesting aneed for further surveys, especially among lesserknown groups.

See all Biodiversity data citations at GBIF.org

14

Biodiversity science15“To our knowledge, this is the first study todeal with several traits in a large numberof taxa, implying more abstraction in theconcept of a trait and variability within a
trait to be recognized.”—Younis et al. 2018

The application of deep learning on natural history
collections represents an even more recent
development, but a German-Saudi team led by Sohaib
Younis of Senckenberg Research Institute has tied
together numerous strands of investigation thathighlight the potential for machine learning to increase
our understanding of life on Earth.
The research taps one of the largest online collectionsof labelled species images: the GBIF species
occurrence index, which contains more than 44 million
records associated with at least one image (https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/gallery). While an increasing
number of photos come from citizen scientists
through automated species-recognition suggestions,about three quarters of them—more than 30 million—
come from the world’s natural history collections.
Younis and his co-authors focused on these herbariumscans as a first step in crafting this thoughtfully
designed study. Recognizing that existing taxon
recognition systems currently work best for the
taxa of North America and Europe, they chose toconcentrate on the plant taxa of Africa, downloading
830,408 images for the 1,000 most-scanned species.
This element of the approach could bring the added
benefit of improving taxon recognition for a region thatneeds additional taxonomic resources and expertise.

CITRULLUS LANATUS BY A.J.B. CHEVALIER HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/436974457 (CC BY 4.0)

Data story LEARNING FROM—AND WITH—THE MACHINES:TAXON AND TRAIT RECOGNITION FROM HERBARIUM SCANSDATA USED: 830,408 SPECIMEN IMAGES

By capitalizing on rapid improvements in patternrecognition algorithms, the authors sought toexpand their deep-learning analysis to go beyond
taxonomic recognition and explore a deep-learning
system’s ability to recognize morphological traits
from herbarium scans. Extracting a subset of morethan 150,000 images of 170 species for which trait
data was available, this portion of the machine-based
analysis settled on examining a limited set of 19 leaf
traits (related to leaf arrangement, structure, form,

As in other machine-learning analyses, systematic
pre-processing plays a critical role in preparations.
Cropping and reducing the downloaded images toa standard size—here, just 292 by 196 pixels—
prepares them for image analysis and eliminates
elements like colour bars, labels and handwritten
annotations that only serve as background noise to
the machines.
In results the authors deem ‘promising’, taxon
recognition from herbarium specimens proved ‘very
efficient’, with 96.3 percent accuracy based on theanalysis’s top five predictions. While the approach‘on average also performed well for traits,’ there’s
room for further study. For example, sample size
fails to explain why the machines find it more difficult
to identify generalized traits than taxon-specificpatterns—something that’s directly opposed tohumans, who can recognize an individual trait much
more easily than they can correctly identify a species.
This last finding highlights the fact that unanticipatedgaps remain between human and machine forms
of understanding. Automating species and trait
recognition from diverse collections offers an
auspicious method for supporting and enriching
the ongoing work of collections digitization, but
cultural norms and practices tend to trail behind thecapabilities of the latest technological advances.
How we can best integrate them with their respective
shortcomings?
The 2018 Montreal Declaration for a Responsible
Development of Artificial Intelligence (https://www.montrealdeclaration-responsibleai.com/thedeclaration) notes that “numbers cannot determine
what has moral value, nor what is socially desirable.”
Like this study’s research team, the biodiversity
informatics community can expect to face choices
about how best to design and engage deep-learning
tools while striving toward ethically responsible andsocially desirable outcomes.
Younis S, Weiland C, Hoehndorf R, Dressler S, Hickler
T, Seeger B and Schmidt M (2018) Taxon and trait
recognition from digitized herbarium specimens using deep
convolutional neural networks. Botany Letters. Informa UK
Limited 165(3–4): 377–383.Available at:https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2018.1446357
Author country/area: Germany, Saudi Arabia
Research funding: German Research Foundation, National
Multiple Sclerosis Society (Michigan Chapter)biodiversity science

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly
enabling new, innovative uses across the biodiversity
informatics community. Examples of machinelearning technology used in the biodiversity
observation network iNaturalist.org and other tools
offer now-familiar examples of how computers canuse image recognition to improve real-time species
identification across wide-ranging taxonomic groups.

margin and venation) believed to be identifiable inherbarium scans.

16

PRIMARY BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION: THE SHIFTFROM SPECIMENS TO OBSERVATIONSDATA USED: 649,767,741 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Troudet J, Vignes-Lebbe R, Grandcolas P and Legendre
F (2018) The Increasing Disconnection of Primary
Biodiversity Data from Specimens: How Does It Happen and
How to Handle It? Systematic Biology. Oxford University
Press (OUP) 67(6): 1110–1119.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syy044

The majority of species occurrences available from
GBIF.org represent either a physical specimen or
sample, typically stored in a museum or herbarium,or an observation, often by citizen scientists
accompanied by an image, sound or video recording.
While the first records to be published in GBIF camefrom museums, observations now make up more than
80 per cent of all species occurrences in GBIF.
Examining the consequences of this shift in recording
biodiversity data, Troudet and colleagues downloaded
all occurrences from GBIF.org available in June 2016
and analysed developments across 24 taxonomic
classes. As expected, the shift from predominantly
specimen-based to observation-based reflects an
exponential growth in species observation data
recently and and relatively low growth in specimenbased records.
The shift, however, doesn’t imply a lack of quality, as
records with low spatial precision decreased from50 per cent in 1900 to 0.6 per cent in 2014, while
species-level identification increased from 86 to 99
per cent over the same period.
The authors argue that the increase in generalavailability of primary biodiversity data is on one hand
good, but unless recording practice is expanded toinclude more data and physical evidence, its potential
use will be limited to ecological studies, preventing
deeper insights into systematics and evolution.

CLASSIFYING CRICKETS’ CHIRPS: ACOUSTICPROFILING IN ORTHOPTERADATA USED: 16,900 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Riede K (2018) Acoustic profiling of Orthoptera: present
state and future needs. Journal of Orthoptera Research.
Pensoft Publishers 27(2): 203–215.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.27.23700
Author country/area: Germany
Research funding: None listed

Allowing for non-invasive and cheap detectionof elusive species, identifying animals throughsound, especially birds and frogs, is becoming
increasingly popular, particularly in habitats wherevisual observation is difficult or even impossible. In
December 2018, the addition of Xeno-canto—a longterm collaborative bird song project—doubled thenumber of audio-enabled records in GBIF.
In a new article, a researcher from Germany reviews
the current state of acoustic profiling of anothergroup of singers: Orthoptera, known for the sounds
produced by rubbing wings and/or legs together.
While this insect order of grasshoppers, locusts andcrickets has many species with specific songs reliablefor classification, availability and accessibility of
Orthoptera song recordings in general is extremely
limited.
In GBIF, Orthoptera occurrence records withassociated audio derive mainly from the ZoologicalResearch Museum Alexander König—in particular
DORSA (Digitized Orthoptera Specimens Access)—but
also the Borror Lab of Bioacoustics (BLB) at Ohio
State University. While Orthoptera records with soundare scarce compared to vertebrates, the number ofavailable records has increased by more than 50 per
cent since the publication of the article.

To improve otherwise controversial knowledge on
the distribution of primates in Mexico, authors of thisstudy combined ecological niche models—using GBIFmediated data—with specific expert ecological andhistorical knowledge of the three relevant taxa: Ateles
geoffroyi, Alouatta pigra, and Alouatta palliata subsp.
mexicana. Integrating expert knowledge at different
steps of the modelling procedure, they produce
new, refined distribution maps, while assessing theperformance of the models both with and without
expert contribution.
Not surprisingly, the non-expert modeled distribution
areas were much larger than those refined by expert
knowledge. While the resulting maps are importantresources for prioritizing conservation efforts, thetransparency of the underlying methodology canhelp avoid experiences of bias involved with including
expert knowledge in ecological niche modelling
everywhere.

ON THE EVOLUTION OF FOOD CUSTOMS
van Erp M, Wevers M and Huurdeman H (2018) Constructing
a Recipe Web from Historical Newspapers. Lecture Notes
in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing,
217–232.Available at:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00671-6_13
Author country/area: Germany
Research funding: None listed

The way we eat and think about food is a part of ourculture and a product of our time. Today, you can findeven the most obscure recipe simply by going online.
Before the internet, newspapers and magazines werean important source of culinary inspiration, and bygoing back in time these can provide valuable insights
into the evolution of food customs.
In this paper, researchers from Amsterdam extractand structure recipes found in Dutch newspapers
published between 1945 and 1995. Relying on
digitized and OCR’ed (Optical Character Recognition)text from the National Library of the Netherlands,
they use machine learning methods to construct a
historical database of more than 27,000 recipes. To
enrich the data, their workflow separates and tags

The author points to passive acoustic monitoring as
a potential means of increasing sound data available,
but this will require a data warehouse for bioacoustic
data. Automatic classification and identification ofrecords may necessitate novel acoustic profilingalgorithms, or existing methods already employed inhuman speech recognition may be the way forward.

REFINED ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELS FORMEXICAN PRIMATES
Calixto-Pérez E, Alarcón-Guerrero J, Ramos-Fernández G,
Dias PAD, Rangel-Negrín A, Améndola-Pimenta M, Domingo
C, Arroyo-Rodríguez V, Pozo-Montuy G, Pinacho-Guendulain
B, Urquiza-Haas T, Koleff P and Martínez-Meyer E (2018)
Integrating expert knowledge and ecological niche models
to estimate Mexican primates’ distribution. Primates.
Springer Nature 59(5): 451–467.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-018-0673-8
Author country/area: Mexico, Spain
Research funding: National Council of Science andTechnology (MX), National Polytechnic Institute (MX)

Ecological niche modelling can predict the potential
area in which a species is likely to occur, however, as
these derive mainly from climatic and topographic
features, they may overestimate the distribution of a
species.
OECANTHUS NIGRICORNIS BY EDGARALLENHOOPOE HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1668809618 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

biodiversity sciencebiodiversity science

Author country/area: France
Research funding: Ministère de la Recherche

17

18

biodiversity science

quantities, units and ingredients. Using GBIF-mediateddata, they even match naturally sourced ingredients
against scientific names and determine their origin.
Combining language processing, machine learning andsemantic structuring, this work provides a valuable
source of data on food culture. One example of achanging concept is how some vegetarian recipes
often contained animal products (e.g. chicken brothand fermented shrimp). The authors, however, leave
the actual interpretation of the results to humanities
researchers, as the code and resulting database areavailable for anyone to use, browse and analyse.

SHORTLISTING PLANT TAXA FOR IDENTIFICATIONUSING NEARBY OCCURRENCE RECORDSDATA USED: 27,969,662 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Wittich HC, Seeland M, Wäldchen J, Rzanny M and Mäder
P (2018) Recommending plant taxa for supporting on-site
species identification. BMC Bioinformatics. Springer
Science and Business Media LLC 19(1).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-018-2201-7
Author country/area: Germany
Research funding: Federal Ministry of Education andResearch (DE), Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature
Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (DE)Being able to accurately identify a species is the basisof numerous disciplines within biodiversity science,and increasingly also for citizen scientists using theirsmartphones for observing and recording occurrencesin nature.
This study by bioinformatics researchers in Germany
evaluates the feasibility of generating ranked
shortlists of plants likely to be encountered by anobserver at a given location—based on alreadyreported observations through GBIF and national
range maps of ~2,700 taxa. The idea being: the fewer
potential candidates, the simpler the identification.

19

TRACKING INSECT MIGRATIONS USING POLLENMETABARCODING
Suchan T, Talavera G, Sáez L, Ronikier M and Vila R (2018)
Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distanceinsect migrations. Molecular Ecology Resources. Wiley
19(1): 149–162.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.12948
Author country/area: Poland, Spain, United States
Research funding: Ministry of Economy andCompetitiveness (ES), British Ecological Society, Polish
Academy of Sciences, European Commission Seventh
Framework Programme, National Geographic Society

Migration with changing seasons is a well-known andstudied phenomenon in birds, but little is known about
insect migrations as small organism movements are
significantly more difficult to track.
Feeding on flowers, insects can carry pollen depositedon their bodies across long distances. This study
proposes a novel approach to studying insect
migrations by pollen metabarcoding. By capturing
painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) landingon the Mediterranean coast of Spain, researchers
obtained pollen carried by the insects and sequenced
the DNA, targeting a specific ribosomal sequence.
Using GBIF-mediated occurrences the authors
determined the geographic distributions of all
detected plants, highlighting the species notapparently overlapping with the sampling sites. They
found DNA of 40 plants not known to occur where thebutterflies were caught.
By mapping extent of all alien plant distributions
combined with recent wind trajectories in the area,
the researchers predict migration routes from Africa
originating in a much larger range than previously
believed.

The authors test the methodology on a set of 28,000
plant photos from Flickr, each tagged with the nameof the taxa in question and coordinates of where thephoto was taken. By combining the range maps andoccurrence data, they were able to include the correct
species in a shortlist in 86 per cent of the photos.

CYGNUS BUCCINATOR BY KARRIN HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1315046432 (CC BY-NC 4.0)☑☑You can provide at least one example in which you haveshared biodiversity data through GBIF, used GBIF-mediateddata, and/or advocated open data in your professional
capacity☑☑You agree with the ICSU-World Data System Data Sharing

Principles—in short, that data should be shared openly ina timely manner, with the fewest restrictions possible andused with proper citation☑☑You agree to share your contact information on GBIF.org, andpossibly on websites run by GBIF nodes and partners☑☑You allow the GBIF Secretariat and GBIF nodes to contact you
about opportunities to promote open biodiversity data at
specific events☑☑You commit to providing details annually about at least one

event, publication or process in which you have advocatedfor open biodiversity data

Overall, the approach proved successful insignificantly reducing the number of species tobe considered when making an identification. The
performance of such methods will only improve as
more species occurrences are added to GBIF.

If you can check all of the above, then maybe you’re the next Biodiversity Open Data Ambassador!
VANESSA CARDUI BY SHD1998
HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2269313136 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

See all Biodiversity science citations at GBIF.org

Do you Believe in open biodiversity data?

For more information about the programme and how to apply, please visit

http://bit.ly/bodamba

20

21

Ecology, evolution, behaviour and systematics

data story USING SPECIES OCCURRENCE DATA AS

EVIDENCE TO TEST RECEIVED BIOGEOGRAPHIC WISDOMDATA USED: 200 MILLION SPECIES OCCURRENCES
The idea that well-defined physiographical regions
both shape and define distinct groupings of species
has formed a central tenet of biological sciences since
Alexander von Humboldt and Alfred Russel Wallace
first offered their own closely observed insights on the
distribution patterns of plants and animals.
Given our current ecological and evolutionary
processes, these ‘natural’ boundaries seem like anintuitively accurate way of describing patterns of
biological communities. But even as biogeographic
research has evolved into an increasingly
computational discipline, Humboldt and Wallace’s
scientific heirs haven’t challenged such concepts,
tending instead to accept the validity of ecoregions
on faith—or, at most, organizing new efforts by
experts to refine and adjust proposed boundaries andclassifications.
Stanford PhD candidate Jeffrey Smith represents
the next generation of biogeographers. Armed withemerging statistical tools and libraries, massive
computing power and big data in the form of 200
million occurrence records from the GBIF network,

he and his co-authors sought to use species-level
evidence to weigh the validity of the ecoregion
concept by asking the question:

Do ecoregion borders represent
meaningful delineations between
distinct biotic communities?

The experiment is elegant and, unlike many studies
based on linear regression analyses and species
accumulation curves, translates easily into a simple
story. Like a naturalist haphazardly recording thelocation and identity of species they encounter onan unplanned hike, the computer model used in the
study produced random but rule-based transects,
painstakingly plotting occurrence data for plants,
arthropods, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians
and fungi from the GBIF network through the GDN
ecoregional map, 10-km2 pixel by pixel.
The analysis serves to compare two competing
hypotheses regarding how many new species themodel (and the naturalist) would observe as theymeander indiscriminately through the landscape. The
sharp-transition hypothesis predicts that the rate ofobserving novel species would rapidly increase uponentering a new ecoregion, while the gradual-transition
hypothesis assumes little or no change in the rate ofspecies discovery when moving within or between
ecoregions. A result favouring the latter would point
to relatively permeable ecoregion boundaries, calling
into question their validity and use.

However, tabulating results for where and how often
the model found new species, the authors foundthat ecoregion boundaries are better predictors of
the biogeographic patterns of species accumulation
than random species accumulation by distance.
While the strength of the connection varies by taxa—
particularly (though perhaps not unexpectedly) in thecase of fungi—the results show ecoregion borders
as areas of rapid species turnover, a conclusion thataligns with the sharp-transition hypothesis andgenerally confirms the notion that ecoregions reflect
and reveal underlying evolutionary and ecologicalprocesses.
The conclusions drawn in Smith et al. 2018 offer
validation that the GDN authors welcomed in theirdetailed follow-up on guiding principles, milestones
and targets (https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.
aaw2869) and provide fertile ground for additional
research, like investigating the relationship between
global ecoregions and phylogeny (cf. https://doi.
org/10.1111/cla.12381).
Smith JR, Letten AD, Ke P-J, Anderson CB, Hendershot JN,
Dhami MK, Dlott GA, Grainger TN, Howard ME, Morrison BML,
Routh D, San Juan PA, Mooney HA, Mordecai EA, Crowther
TW and Daily GC (2018) A global test of ecoregions. Nature
Ecology & Evolution. Springer Nature 2(12): 1889–1896.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0709-x
Author country/area: Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland,
United States
Research funding: None listed

Despite Smith’s self-effacing description of thepaper’s origins as “the result of serendipity, sarcastic
comments, snacks, beer, and friends” (https://go.nature.com/2OrSTNW), this data-driven test was
no idle pastime. Species protection, conservation
planning, habitat restoration and other applied
natural-resource disciplines all depend to a large
extent on the validity of ecoregions as a framework fororganizing and prioritizing large-scale on-the-groundactions.
To take just one high-profile example: the paper
describing the proposed Global Deal for Nature(GDN: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014) as acompanion to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017

SMITH ET AL. FURTHER DEMONSTRATED THEIR COMMITMENT TO BEST PRACTICES IN OPEN SCIENCE BY PROMPTING THE JOURNAL TO PUBLISH AN AUTHORCORRECTION (HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1038/S41559-019-0858-6) THAT ADDS CITATIONS FOR DOWNLOAD DOIS OF SOURCE DATA FROM THE GBIF NETWORK.

ecology & evolution

SERVED AS THE BASIS OF THE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS IN SMITH ET AL. 2018 , THE LATEST EXPERT-LED REFINEMENT OF A GLOBAL MAP OF ECOREGIONSDEVELOPED AS PART OF THE PROPOSED GLOBAL DEAL FOR NATURE HAD ITS APPROACH VALIDATED BY THE RESEARCH. FIGURE FROM DINERSTEIN ET AL(2017) HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1093/BIOSCI/BIX014 (CC BY 4.0)

is explicitly titled: ”An Ecoregion-Based Approach toProtecting Half the Terrestrial Realm.” Smith and his
co-authors use this latest expert-led refinement of a
spatially explicit global map of ecoregions, even as
they hint at the stakes involved putting the map to its
first statistical test: “Despite the recognized value ofcategorically defined ecoregions in the developmentof modern biodiversity science, it is possible that they
are obsolete and may even misinform research andconservation efforts.”

22

MOLECULAR EVOLUTION IS SLIGHTLY FASTER IN
THE TROPICSDATA USED: 714,807 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Orton MG, May JA, Ly W, Lee DJ and Adamowicz SJ(2018) Is molecular evolution faster in the tropics?
Heredity. Springer Nature 122(5): 513–524. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41437-018-0141-7

Biodiversity increases as one moves closer to theequator—a phenomenon known as the latitudinal
diversity gradient. Researchers have proposed theevolutionary speed hypothesis (ESH) as a possible
underlying mechanism—explained by shorter
generation times, higher mutation rates and/or
faster rate of selection in the tropics. But is molecular
evolution actually faster in the tropics?
In a new comprehensive study, researchers
from Ontario, Canada analysed and aligned DNA
barcode sequences of the mitochondrially-encoded
Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene for 8,000
members of six of the largest animal phyla. They thenpaired closely related lineages exhibiting a differenceof at least 20 degrees in median latitude as validatedby GBIF-mediated occurrences and compared rates of
evolution.
While the researchers only found a weak trend of
higher rates in lower-latitude (51.6 per cent) vs higherlatitude (48.4 per cent) lineages, the difference wasstatistically significant. Some phyla, e.g. Chordata
and Echinodermata, displayed stronger associations,significant even when correcting for multiple testing.
So—is molecular evolution faster in the tropics? Yes,
but not by much.

CLIMATIC NICHE EVOLUTION FASTER IN WARMBLOODED VERTEBRATESDATA USED: 294,704,442 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Rolland J, Silvestro D, Schluter D, Guisan A, Broennimann
O and Salamin N (2018) The impact of endothermy on the
climatic niche evolution and the distribution of vertebrate
diversity. Nature Ecology & Evolution. Springer Nature2(3): 459–464.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0451-9
Author country/area: Canada,Sweden, Switzerland
Research funding: University of British Columbia, Swedish
Research Council, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation

The ecological niche of a species may evolve overtime, and determining the mechanisms that drive
such niche evolution is a key question in evolutionary
biology. With climate and temperature playing animportant role in shaping ecological niches, metabolicheat production (endodermy) may be a major factor.
To address this, authors of a large study of terrestrial
vertebrates compared ecological niche evolution
between birds and mammals (endoderms) andsnakes, lizards and amphibians (ectoderms). By using
GBIF-mediated observation occurrences combinedwith fossil records and paleo-temperature curves, theresearchers reconstructed past climatic niches of allvertebrate groups over 270 million years.
Based on these paleoclimatic niches, they estimatedthe rate of niche evolution and found this to be fasterin endodermic birds and mammals than in ectodermic
amphibians, snakes and lizards–a result that was alsosignificant when only considering the last 5 million
years.
The slow niche evolution found in ectoderms may
affect the dynamics of current ranges and patternsof biodiversity–especially when climate change will
require rapid evolution of climatic tolerances.

GHOST SPIDERS: DISENTANGLING THE EVOLUTION
OF SPECIALIZED MORPHOLOGIESCeccarelli FS, Koch NM, Soto EM, Barone ML, Arnedo MA
and Ramírez MJ (2018) The Grass was Greener: Repeated
Evolution of Specialized Morphologies and Habitat Shifts
in Ghost Spiders Following Grassland Expansion in SouthAmerica. Systematic Biology. Oxford University Press(OUP). Available at:https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syy028
Author country/area: Argentina, Mexico, Spain, UnitedStatesResearch funding: ANPCyT, iBOL, CONICET, Spanish
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, National Geographic
Society

Many invertebrates have evolved to fall in with theirsurroundings, matching their body colour or posturewith leaves or sticks as a means of hiding from preyor predators. Among the ghost spiders (subfamily
Amaurobioidinae), primarily from South America,
several species have slender, elongated bodies thatallow them to conceal themselves completely within
grass leaves.
In this study, Ceccarelli and colleagues set out
to investigate the ecological processes behindmorphological adaptations in ghost spiders throughextensive molecular phylogenetics and trait mapping.
They used GBIF-mediated occurrences from theMuseo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales to ascertain
the geographical range and general habitat type foreach species.

ARACHOSIA PRAESIGNIS BY JUAN JOSÉ BONANNO HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2006069105 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

From a dated molecular phylogeny, the authors reveal
multiple switches from forests to open habitats,coinciding with the expansion of South America’s
grasslands during the Miocene. Although at least threegrass-adapted lineages evolved independently, thestudy finds a common morphological characteristic,
as all three present a narrowing of the prosoma (fusedhead and thorax), allowing the spiders to extend thefront pair of legs completely and to hide within a grass
leaf.

C4 PHOTOSYNTHESIS PRESENTS NO BARRIER TO
COLONIZATION OF TEMPERATE CLIMATESDATA USED: 14,800,000 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Watcharamongkol T, Christin P-A and Osborne CP (2018)
C4 photosynthesis evolved in warm climates but promoted
migration to cooler ones. Ecology Letters. Wiley 21(3):376–383. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12905
Author countries/areas: United Kingdom
Research funding: Royal Thai Government

In the hot climates of tropical and subtropicalregions, plants have developed the specialized C₄
photosynthetic pathway, optimized for increased
photorespiration under high temperatures. More thanhalf of the species with this evolutionary adaptation
belong to the grass family (Poaceae).
In this study, researchers used all GBIF-mediated
Poaceae occurrences combined with WorldClim
climate data to derive temperature ranges for morethan 2,000 grass species–about half of which are C₄.
They analyse the transition of species between
climates and photosynthetic types, finding that C₄
origins are more common in tropical regions, andthat reversal from C₄ to C₃ almost never happensin grasses. However, transitions from tropical totemperate climates is more common for C₄ than for C₃
taxa.
While increases in the upper bounds of plant
temperature niches are associated with C₄

photosynthesis, the lower bounds did not differ
significantly between C₃ and C₄. Taken together, thesefindings suggest that C₄ presents no physiologicalbarrier to colonization of temperate climates.

NEOTROPICAL FRUITS DISPERSED BY
MEGAFAUNA, BUT ALSO LATER BY HUMANSDATA USED: 51,084 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

van Zonneveld M, Larranaga N, Blonder B, Coradin L,
Hormaza JI and Hunter D (2018) Human diets drive
range expansion of megafauna-dispersed fruit species.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(13):3326–3331.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718045115
Author country/area: Canada,Sweden, Switzerland
Research funding: Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Forest, Trees, and Agroforestry
Research Program, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad,
European Regional Development Fund, European Union,
Ibero-American Program for Science and Technology

Animals help disperse and thus increase the ranges ofplants and fruits that are part of their diet. Neotropicalfruits once dispersed by extinct megafauna—like thegiant sloth—may also have been part of human diets,
but the human role in dispersal is unknown.
By comparing known fruit-producing species
exclusively part of megafauna diet with species also
eaten by humans, this study provides insights into theeffects of human dispersal of 130 wild and cultivatedneotropical fruits. Their analysis involved the use of
GBIF-mediated occurrences to determine species’
geographic ranges and climatic niches.
The results of the study show that the ranges of fruits
in human diet are two to three times larger than those
only eaten by extinct megafauna—both for cultivatedand wild species.
This suggests a clear role of human food usage inexpanding the ranges of species that would otherwise
have contracted with the extinction of megafauna.

ecology & evolution

ecology & evolution

Author countries/areas: Canada
Research funding: Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada

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FOSSILIZED POLLEN OF CHARISMATIC SOUTHERNHEMISPHERE PLANT FOUND IN WESTERNGREENLANDDATA USED: 45,440 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Grímsson F, Grimm GW, Potts AJ, Zetter R and Renner
SS (2017) A Winteraceae pollen tetrad from the early
Paleocene of western Greenland, and the fossil recordof Winteraceae in Laurasia and Gondwana. Journal of
Biogeography. Wiley 45(3): 567–581.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13154.

Comprising ~130 species in seven genera,
Winteraceae is family of flowering plants with greatest
diversity in the southern hemisphere. A pollen fossil
found recently in a western Greenland Paleocene
sediment sample tells a new story about thebiogeography of Winteraceae.
Presenting the find, researchers in this study used
light and electron microscopy to compare thefossilized grain with other fossils and extant pollen,
describing the new species Pseudowinterapollis
agatdalensis (after the valley where the fossil was
found).
Using GBIF-mediated Winteraceae occurrences, theresearchers derive climate and vegetation profiles forextant genera of the family. The paleoflora of Western
Greenland suggests a fully humid temperate climate
with biomes analogous to those now occupied byextant Winteraceae genera in Australasia.
The evidence presented in the study implies that
Winteraceae is not just a charasmatic family of theSouthern hemisphere, but likely provides important
clues to understanding global biogeographic evolutionof flowering plants.

GLOBAL SURVEY SHOWS GENETIC STRUCTURE
PREDICTED BY RANGE SIZE AND LATITUDE

SOME LIKE IT WARM, OTHERS COLD–BUT MOST
PREFER MODERATE

CLIMATIC STABILITY ALLOWS AREAS OF ENDEMISMTO PERSIST THROUGH TIME

Pelletier TA and Carstens BC (2018) Geographical range
size and latitude predict population genetic structure ina global survey. Biology Letters. The Royal Society 14(1):20170566.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0566

DATA USED: 18,560 SPECIES OCCURRENCESDATA USED: 7,219 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Vetaas OR, Grytnes J-A, Bhatta KP and Hawkins BA (2018)
An intercontinental comparison of niche conservatism
along a temperature gradient. Journal of Biogeography.
Wiley 45(5): 1104–1113.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13185

Pinilla-Buitrago GE, Escalante T, Gutiérrez-Velázquez
A, Reyes-Castillo P and Rojas-Soto OR (2018) Areas ofendemism persist through time: A palaeoclimatic analysis
in the Mexican Transition Zone. Journal of Biogeography.
Wiley 45(4): 952–961.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13172

Author country/area: United States
Research funding: US Division of Environmental Biology

Both geographical distance and environmental
barriers may influence genetic diversity within a
species population. While models such as isolationby-distance/environment have been shown to play astrong role, broad-scale studies have yet to determine
if other factors might drive population diversity.
By identifying all GBIF-mediated species occurrenceswith associated GenBank accessions (and thus,
genetic sequences), authors of this paper carried out
analysis of more than 8,000 species in an unbiased
assessment of such isolation models. They built a
database of genetic structure predictors, including
habitat type, range area and elevation.
Their results showed that a significant amount of
population genetic structure can be attributed togeographical and environmental differences–andthe top predictors across all analyses were related togeographical range.
The study demonstrates the potential power of having
species occurrence data linked to genetic sequences,and the authors encourage increased efforts inassociating such accessions.

Author country/area: Norway, United States
Research funding: Meltzer Research Fund

According to phylogenetic niche conservatism (PNC),
closely related taxa share similar distributions along
major environmental gradients, e.g. temperature. The
probability of a species evolving within the range of its
ancestor is therefore high.
Using a novel approach to testing the PNC theory,
authors compared disjunct genera on separate
continents with a shared ancestor, but few common
species. By compiling GBIF-mediated occurrence dataof eight woody phanerophyte genera in two regions
differing in extent and complexity–the Nepalese
Himalayas and the Peruvian Andes–they analysed
997 species along a temperature gradient.
All Himalayan genera showed a unimodal responsewith more species in the center of the temperature
range. In the Andes, three genera were most speciose
towards the warm end of the gradient. By statisticalranking, the authors were able to successfully predict
the order of Andean genera based on Himalayan
genera–and vice versa.

Author country/area: Mexico
Research funding: CONACYT, GBIF

Endemic species are geographically restricted toa certain place. When many such species occur inthe same area, the phenomenon is called an areaof endemism. In the Mexican Transition Zone (MTZ)
where the Nearctic and Neotropical biogeographicalregions meet, several such areas exist, but how stable
are they over time?
This study uses ecological niche models basedon GBIF-mediated occcurrences of 218 endemic
species of beetles and mammals to identify areasof endemism in the MTZ. By transferring the models
to three past periods (the Last Glacial Maximum,
the mid-Holocene and the Last Interglacial), they
demonstrate how two current areas of endemism
have persisted throughout the periods.
While the MTZ has been a dynamic and complex
region, the study reveals some climatic stability
for at least the last 130,000 years, allowing for thepermanence of endemic clustering in the region.

The study shows that temperature tolerances
within a clade are conserved over time and space,and supports the notion that the highest numberof species are found around the centre of thetemperature range of a genus.

PSEUDOWINTERA COLORATA BY KRZYSZTOF ZIARNEK, KENRAIZ HTTP://BIT.LY/32RL6Q7 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

See all Ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics citations at GBIF.org

ecology & evolution

ecology & evolution

Author country/area: Austria, France, Germany, South Africa
Research funding: Austrian Science Fund

25

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27

reductions; and finally, climate regulation—throughadded value of rainfall on hydroelectricity, soybean
and beef production. The analysis of timber relied on
occurrence information from GBIF, which also enableda biodiversity analysis complementing the study
with information on the potential value of non-use
services, such as pollination and bioprospecting.

Ecosystem services“All the values (use values) where there is access(roads, people, towns)— they are also morethreatened by deforestation—so there is a conflict.
Imminent risk of deforestation and thereby losing
ecosystem service values.”
The results of the work have had an immediate
effect on policy in Brazil, as Soares-Filho was invited
to appear before a federal Senate hearing on a
proposal to relax the main set of laws regulatingconservation in private properties. The bill proposedby the administration would effectively end the legal
reserve requiring land owners to set aside areas forconservation.

Data story HOW MUCH IS THE AMAZON FOREST WORTH?
“People think that the forest is only valuable
when chopped down and sold as timber.
We can show that not just biodiversity is
at risk—but that deforestation actually
decreases the monetary value of the
Amazon.”—Britaldo Soares-Filho,
Federal University of Minas Gerais
As one of the most biodiverse biomes on the planet,
the Amazon Forest is home to tens if not hundreds ofthousands of plant and animal species that provide
natural, cultural and economic values, not only to
Brazil, but to the entire world. Understanding value—essentially, putting a price tag on such services—isimportant to researchers trying to help stakeholders
make informed decisions when it comes to protecting
the Amazon.
Professor Britaldo Soares-Filho at the Center for
Remote Sensing at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is an expert inenvironmental modelling who has been working to
produce science relevant to policy. Recently his

team was approached by the World Bank, proposing avaluation of the ecosystem services of the Amazon.
Soares-Filho explains:

ASSESSING THE GLOBAL POLLINATION CRISISUSING HISTORICAL MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Bartomeus I, Stavert JR, Ward D and Aguado O (2019)
Historical collections as a tool for assessing the global
pollination crisis. Philosophical Transactions of theRoyal Society B: Biological Sciences. The Royal Society374(1763): 20170389.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0389
Author countries/areas: New Zealand, Spain
Research funding: BBVA Foundation

To fill some of these gaps in knowledge, this study
presents a roadmap for using historical collections
data—as mediated by GBIF—to assess long-term
pollinator population changes. In two case studies—
one of Spain and one of New Zealand—the researchers
demonstrate analytical strategies and considerations
for comparing historical records with modern data toderive pollinator population trends.

Realizing the importance of responding to thisrequest, Soares-Filho and colleagues relied on
experiences from previous regional valuation studies
and decided to focus on very tangible services that
could be translated into specific value components.

Their approach was to estimate the impact offorest loss on the values provided by food and raw
materials—through net revenues from reduced
impact logging, brazil nut and rubber; greenhouse gas
mitigation—through potential payments for emission

Author country/area: Brazil, Netherlands, United States
Research funding: None listed

Declines among pollinators due to climate change,chemical exposure and habitat destruction are ofincreasing global concern. However, most of ourknowledge is limited, both in terms of geography andtaxonomy, as most studies tend to focus on bees in
Europe and North America.

“Actually, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about
the value of the Amazon—because it is invaluable!
And our ability to put a monetary value on ecosystemservices is still very limited.”“Our study is the most comprehensive valuation studyof the Brazilian Amazon and the first to be spatially
explicit at a very high resolution. It relies on solid
scientific models and encompasses several valuation
components”.

Strand J, Soares-Filho B, Costa MH, Oliveira U, Ribeiro
SC, Pires GF, Oliveira A, Rajão R, May P, van der Hoff R,
Siikamäki J, da Motta RS and Toman M (2018) Spatially
explicit valuation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest’s
Ecosystem Services. Nature Sustainability. Springer
Nature 1(11): 657–664. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0175-0

BERTHOLLETIA EXCELSA BY RENATA XAVIERHTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2242735480 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The bill had already passed in the lower house ofcongress, but following the hearing it was rejected by
the Senate. Continuing his mission to demonstrate thevalue of the Amazon and disseminating the results
to broad audiences, Soares-Filho wants to end aparadigm:

Their approach reveals both declines and increases
across different groups, highlighting how someclades are more sensitive to disturbances thanothers. The study shows how strong collaborations
between museum curators and researchers can help
answer some of the most pressing ecological andevolutionary questions.

See all Ecosystem services citations at GBIF.org

ecosystem services

AMAZON RAINFOREST BY ALEXANDER GERST HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/ASTRO_ALEX/30626466567 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

“This would be a major set-back for Brazil. By
removing legal reserve protection, you are allowing
deforestation to become rampant again, like in theearly 2000s. We showed them that the Amazon has a
lot of values—for example, if you deforest part of the
Amazon you can reduce the net profit of soy farmers
by up to 35 per cent!”“People think that the forest is only valuable whenchopped down and sold as timber. We can show thatnot just biodiversity is at risk—but that deforestation
actually decreases the monetary value of the
Amazon.”28

29

In 2013, researchers Rachel Warren and Jeff Pricefrom the University of East Anglia’s Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research led a multi-author team thatpublished an early, high-profile use of GBIF-mediateddata in Nature Climate Change (Warren et al. 2013:https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1887). The paper
drew on records from nearly 50,000 plant and anmal
species, seeking to understand how increases in
global temperature will affect more common species.
The findings forecasted drastic reductions in species’
geographic ranges while outlining how quick action to
mitigate the impacts of climate change could reduce
the scale of these losses and buy time for species toadapt.

Climate change

Fast forward to 2018, when Warren and Price led
publicationof a fresh look at a somewhat refinedSomeexamplesIMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL WARMING FOR PEOPLE, ECONOMIES AND ECOSYSTEMS. CROPPED FROM FIGURE IN IPCC SR15: SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS*BIODIVERSITY-RELATED FINDINGS IN LATEST IPCC REPORTDATA USED: 385,681,365 SPECIES OCCURRENCES
In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) published its Special Report on
Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR15: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15). Responding to an invitation from the countries
that adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015, the reportaims to “strengthen the global response to the threatof climate change, sustainable development, andefforts to eradicate poverty.”
The IPCC SR15 seeks to provide governments withcomprehensive, authoritative scientific advice on
how environmental risk levels will change between
our world and future ones in which the global mean
temperature increases by 1.5°C and 2°C above preindustrial levels. By clearly outlining the choices
and trade-offs that decision-makers face, the report
also provides them with practical guidance on
what’s needed to demonstrate responsible politicalleadership around climate change.
Links between primary biodiversity data and highlevel policy documents like SR15 often border on

imperceptible, even in the best of circumstances.
Comprehensive global assessments examine tens
if not hundreds of thousands of scientific research
articles, and climate change analyses must canvass
an even more scientific, technical and socioeconomic dimensions. Citations—much less data
citations—refer to only a fraction of the massive
bibliographies, making it nearly impossible to trace
direct connections back to underlying data with any
confidence.
Nearly impossible, that is. For the intrepid investigator
who follows the trail of citations through the scenic
distractions of supplementary materials, the link
between the research that underpins SR15’s key
biodiversity-related conclusions and data from the
GBIF network is unmistakable. What’s more, thesteady increase in the amount of GBIF-mediated data
during the last decade forms a critical part of thesepolicy-relevant findings.

‘Since our previous analysis in 2012, the [authors’]
database has been updated and expanded to include
nearly 70,000 more species of plants and animals.…
Both updates to the GBIF database and increased
spatial resolution enabled us to include thousands
more species than were available in our earlier
studies.’
In fact, this increase in data availability enabled theintroduction of an entire class of animals excluded
from the previous analysis—insects, 19,848 speciesof them. Their earlier omission was limiting, not only
because of the role that “the little things that run theworld” (as E.O. Wilson once characterized them) playpreserving critical ecosystem functions and services,
but also because the authors found that ‘insects
benefit most from constraining warming to 1.5°C
rather than 2°C.’
SR15 draws on other research supported by the GBIF
network, at least secondarily, like the dozen of the
131 model predictions reviewed in Urban’s 2015 metaanalysis (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa4984)
that reported using GBIF-mediated data. But on the—Warren et al. 2018

single page (p. 218) allocated to analysing ‘Changes in
species range, abundance and extinction rates,’ SR15
refers to Warren et al. 2018 six times—for example,
repeating the paper’s conclusion that limiting warming
by 0.5°C could lead to a threefold reduction in thenumber of insect species facing extinction (defined asloss of more than half of geographic range) and halve
the risk for plant and vertebrate species.
For institutions that share data through the GBIF
network, the IPCC SR15 is more than a high-profile
call to action. The practice of assigning DOIs to user
downloads can help to reveal direct connection
between policy-relevant science and the underlying
data. So when asked why they share their data, GBIF
publishers of any of the 5,432 datasets cited in thedownload can unequivocally state: to contribute tocritical policy-relevant science like the first globalscale assessment of climate change impacts on
insects and the IPCC’s Special Report on Global
Warming of 1.5 °C.
a Warren R, Price J, Graham E, Forstenhaeusler N and
VanDerWal J (2018) The projected effect on insects,
vertebrates, and plants of limiting global warming to 1.5°C
rather than 2°C. Science. American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) 360(6390): 791–795.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar3646
Author country/area: Australia, United Kingdom
Research funding: Natural Environment Research Council(UK)* IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. In: Global Warming of
1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of
1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhousegas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global
response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development,
and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O.
Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia,
C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou,
M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)].
World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 32 pp.
http://bit.ly/sr15spm2

climate change

Data story DATA FROM THE GBIF NETWORK UNDERPINS

question—how will limiting the increase in global
temperature to 1.5°C rather than 2°C affect insects,
vertebrates and plants? Writing this time in the journal
Science, the authors analysed more than 385 million
occurrence records (see the download record: https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.kecdhx) for 105,501 species tofind that limiting warming to 1.5ºC as compared to 2ºC
would cut geographical range losses resulting fromclimate change in half. The supplementary materials
explicitly acknowledge how important the increased
availability of data from the GBIF network was to theresearch.

“Since our previous analysis in 2012, thedatabase has been updated and expanded toinclude nearly 70,000 more species of plants
and animals.…Both updates to the GBIF
database and increased spatial resolution
enabled us to include thousands more species
than were available in our earlier studies.”

30

TEN-DEGREE CHANGE SUFFICIENT FOR TOTALANNIHILATION OF LIFE ON EARTHDATA USED: 7,219,298 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Strona G and Bradshaw CJA (2018) Co-extinctions
annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental
change. Scientific Reports. Springer Nature 8(1). Available
at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35068-1
Author countries/areas: Australia, Italy
Research funding: None listed

Numerous studies have shown how climate change
and human activities can have detrimental effects on
biodiversity, eventually leading to extinctions. Whenone species disappears, it affects all its ecologicaldependencies and further co-extinctions can occur,
possibly causing extinction cascades and eventually,
total collapse of an ecosystem.

Considering environmental tolerances only, theauthors show that a global warming of 10° would leadto the extinction of more than 60 per cent of species.
For 10° cooling, fewer than 20 per cent of species
would remain. However, in both scenarios, if including
effects of co-extinctions, a 10° change would be
sufficient for total annihilation of all life.

MINIMIZING BIODIVERSITY LOSS IN THE BRAZILIANCERRADOMonteiro LM, Brum FT, Pressey RL, Morellato LPC, SoaresFilho B, Lima-Ribeiro MS and Loyola R (2018) Evaluating
the impact of future actions in minimizing vegetation loss
from land conversion in the Brazilian Cerrado under climatechange. Biodiversity and Conservation. Springer Nature.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1627-6
Author countries/areas: Australia, Brazil
Research funding: National Council for Scientific andTechnological Development (BR), Boticário Group Foundation(BR), Funding Authority for Research and Projects (BR)Covering more than 2 million square kilometers andnearly a quarter of Brazil, the tropical ecoregion known
as the Cerrado is a designated biodiversity hotspot—
yet less than 10 per cent is protected. Scenic beauty
and recreational value have a history of playing animportant role in conservation planning, sometimes
resulting in the protection of unproductive landscapeswith steep slopes and infertile soil.
To avoid this and to improve spatial prioritization inprotected areas with a limited budget, this study
used GBIF-mediated occurrences to model plant
distributions under climate change. Coupled with landuse models, these helped evaluate the impact of four
simulated conservation scenarios: implemented now
or sequentially, and either focusing on maximizing
species representation or conservation impact as
defined by beneficial environmental outcomes arisingfrom protection.
Their evaluation revealed little difference between thefour scenarios in average species’ range protected,
however, focusing on conservation impact predicted
vegetation losses significantly higher than in the
representation-based approaches. These findings,
the authors suggest, can serve as a guideline for acollaborative social, political and institutional effort
to achieve the common goal of minimizing the loss of
biodiversity.

HIGH-RISK CONSERVATION PLANNING REQUIREDTO COMBAT EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Ribeiro BR, Sales LP and Loyola R (2018) Strategies for
mammal conservation under climate change in the Amazon.
Biodiversity and Conservation. Springer Nature 27(8):1943–1959.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1518-x
Author countries/areas: Brazil
Research funding: National Council for Scientific andTechnological Development (BR), Funding Authority for
Research and Projects (BR)

When planning conservation efforts, protecting
climatically stable refugia is a low-risk investment, as
species are considered more likely to persist in areas
less affected by climate change. Such prioritization,
however, is often done at the expense of less stablehigh-risk areas, effectively leaving inhabiting species
unprotected and committed to extinction.
Proposing a novel strategy for the conservation of
mammals in the Amazon, researchers used GBIFmediated occurrences of 256 species to generate
ecological niche models that served as primary
input to a spatial prioritization analysis taking into
consideration climate change metrics including
climate anomalies and extremes.
The resulting analysis identified a network of both
high-risk areas and low-risk refugia while revealing
more current and future distributions of species in

DROSERA ROTUNDIFOLIA BY ВЯЧЕСЛАВ ЮСУПОВ HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2265893103 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

the former. The study presents a robust approachto conservation planning, taking into accountuncertainties arising from alternative climate models
and showing that trade-offs related to species
representation can be quantified explicitly.

ASSESSING THE VULNERABILITY OF CARNIVOROUS
PLANTS TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Fitzpatrick MC and Ellison AM (2018) Estimating theexposure of carnivorous plants to rapid climatic change.
In: Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, ecology, and evolution.
Oxford University Press. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779841.003.0028

on immediate threats, such as limiting habitat
conversion, poaching and competition from invasive
species.

FUTURE CLIMATE LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR
EASTERN AMAZON BATS
Costa WF, Ribeiro M, Saraiva AM, Imperatriz-Fonseca VL and
Giannini TC (2018) Bat diversity in Carajás National Forest(Eastern Amazon) and potential impacts on ecosystemservices under climate change. Biological Conservation.
Elsevier BV 218: 200–210.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2017.12.034

Author countries/areas: United States
Research funding: None listed

Author countries/areas: Brazil
Research funding: National Council for Scientific andTechnological Development (BR)

Deriving nutrients from trapping and consuming
animals, carnivorous plants have adapted to growing
in unique microhabitats and soil conditions that canbe difficult to categorize. This poses challenges whentrying to predict how these plants respond to changes
in climate using traditional modelling approaches.

As flower pollinators, seed dispersers and pest
controllers, bats provide important ecosystemservices in the areas they inhabit. Human-induced
climate change may threaten the habitats of bats,and with them, the ecosystem services provided byaffected species.

In a new book examining the physiology, ecology
and evolution of carnivorous plants, authors of achapter dedicated to estimating the response to
climate change attempt to overcome some of thesechallenges and assess the vulnerability of this group.

In a new study of the impact of climate change on
bat diversity in Carajás National Forest (Pará, Brazil),
researchers collect information about more than
80 bat species present in the region. Combining
with GBIF-mediated species occurrences and futureclimate scenarios, they create species distribution
models, showing that 57 per cent of species may
not find suitable habitats in Carajás under thesescenarios. For nectarivorous bats, only a single
species is predicted to find suitable habitat.

Through weighted ensemble models and calculationof bioclimatic velocities—i.e. the rate at which
the climate is changing—the authors show thatmost locations where carnivorous plants occur are
projected to decrease in suitability. In fact, for 65 percent of examined species climate change would leadto substantial declines in habitat.
With no near-team solution to climate change, theauthors propose a conservation strategy focusing

As more than 500 plant species (including important
crops) rely on pollination and seed dispersal by thesebats, the indirect consequences of climate change on
ecosystem services are potentially catastrophic.

See all Impacts of climate change citations at GBIF.org

climate change

climate change

In an elaborate simulation study, researchers
created 2,000 “virtual Earths”, populated themwith virtual terrestrial species each with their own
environmental tolerances calibrated using GBIFmediated occurrences, arranged into structured foodwebs. The authors then exposed the virtual planets
to continuous, progressive changes in temperature(heating and cooling), and while allowing for somedispersal and adaptation, ran the simulations until
temperature had changed by 50° Celcius.

31

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33

quality controls. In the final stage, they generated
tables of time-series, calculated areas of occupancy—
or AOO—by decade and produced maps and graphs of
the results.

Invasive species

The team tested the EBV workflow on three candidate
species with established alien ranges: Sydney golden
wattle (Acacia longifolia), European wasp (Vespula
germanica) and cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis). For
all three species, the metrics derived from the EBVshowed an exponential increase in AOO over the lastfew decades.
Obtaining the data and preparing it for the EBV,
however, wasn’t trivial and the team faced a number ofchallenges along the way, as described by Hardisty:“Much to our surprise, a lot of manual manipulation
was required to get data ready, and it took much
longer than anticipated. There were many differences
between GBIF and ALA—in data retrieval, tools
available for data handling and in terms used todescribe the data. As a result, the level of automation
we wanted wasn’t possible and we had to do a lot of
manual work.”
BUBULCUS IBIS BY DAVID MORALES RAMIREZ HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2013022714 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Data story PREDICTING THE FUTURE OF BIODIVERSITY USINGESSENTIAL BIODIVERSITY VARIABLESDATA USED: 732,113 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

But what if the question was: what is biodiversity
going to be like tomorrow or in ten years? It’s difficult
to measure biodiversity in the same way you canmeasure temperature. What standardized variables
can be used to derive models to accurately predictchanges in biodiversity?
Proposed in 2012, Essential Biodiversity Variables(EBVs) are a concept with the idea of defining
standardized measurements that can be repeated andreproduced accurately in order to inform indicatorsof change in biodiversity. Involved in biodiversity
informatics since 2003, Alex Hardisty, Director ofInformatics Projects at the School of Computer
Science & Informatics at Cardiff University in the UK,
has led the work of preparing what is thought to be thefirst EBV data product, described in a publication fromearly 2019:“I was particularly interested in the challenges
involved in interoperating between research
infrastructures, and in previous projects we becameaware of EBVs and their use as a potential unifying
use-case for driving interoperability between different
infrastructures.”“Some human expertise will always be necessary,
but at the same time, humans are incredibly bad at
keeping an accurate record of what they do, whichmeans it can be impossible to repeat the precise
steps. For EBVs, automated workflows are critical.”—Alex R Hardisty, Cardiff University
As to the demand for EBVs and who should be
responsible for producing data products, Hardisty
returns to the weather and climate analogy:“Why do we have good weather forecasting abilities
today? Because of demands from the aviation andspace industry, East/West political tensions in
1950-70s, even nuclear bomb development—all
driving the need for predictable models. We’ve yet
to see a real demand for routine EBV data products,
however, our study has laid the groundwork for future
developments. If the world wants EBVs with which
it can create indicators and measure changes andtrends in biodiversity, then the world has to provide
the infrastructure to do that. This is driven by thepolitical agenda—and only when this becomes hot
enough will funding become available.”a Hardisty AR, Belbin L, Hobern D, McGeoch MA,
Pirzl R, Williams KJ and Kissling WD (2019) Research
infrastructure challenges in preparing essential
biodiversity variables data products for alien invasive
species. Environmental Research Letters. IOP Publishing
14(2): 25005.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf5db
Author country/area: Australia, Denmark, Netherlands,
United Kingdom
Research funding: H2020 Research Infrastructures,
Australian Research Council

Working in close collaboration with two research
infrastructures—GBIF and the Atlas of Living Australia(ALA)—Hardisty and his team developed a workflow inthree stages aimed at producing an EBV for measuringchanges in the distributions of alien invasive species.
In the first stage, they gathered, filtered andharmonized occurrence data from the infrastructures,
followed by the second stage, in which they merged
data from the two sources and performed a range of

VESPULA GERMANICA BY REINER RICHTER HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1847507468 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

invasive species

What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow, next
week—or even in ten years? This is a question
researchers have worked hard on for many years.
Thanks to high demand from commercial and politicalinterests, such research has received a great dealof interest and funding, and today we have excellent
weather and climate models based on standardized
variables like temperature, wind speed, etc.

As the point of EBVs is to create reliable variables
that can be measured repeatedly, steps should betaken to harmonize data formats, quality checks
and assertions across research infrastructures, andto automate—a point to which Hardisty suggests
working more intensely to overcome some of theconsistencies encountered by their team:“Some human expertise will always benecessary, but at the same time, humans
are incredibly bad at keeping an accurate
record of what they do, which means it canbe impossible to repeat the precise steps. For
EBVs, automated workflows are critical.”

34

PLANT ENDEMISM IN GEORGIA THREATENED BY
ALIEN INVADERSDATA USED: 432,534 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Slodowicz D, Descombes P, Kikodze D, Broennimann O
and Müller-Schärer H (2018) Areas of high conservation
value at risk by plant invaders in Georgia under climatechange. Ecology and Evolution. Wiley 8(9): 4431–4442.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4005
Author countries/areas: Georgia, Switzerland
Research funding: European Cooperation in Science andTechnology

Invasive alien species pose a serious threat tobiodiversity, especially in protected areas (PA)and other areas of high conservation value withmany endemic species. As changing climates may
increase susceptibility of these areas, understanding
and anticipating invasions is important for better
management.

35

In this study, researchers used GBIF-mediatedoccurrences to map endemic species richness
in Georgia—a country situated in the Caucasus
mountains, known for its high plant diversity andendemism. Indeed, they identify high endemism areas
in 20 per cent of the country’s area, of which only 9.4
per cent overlaps with PAs.
The authors modeled the current and future
distributions of 27 known invaders and mapped therichness of these species. Their results show thatclimatic suitability in Georgia for many invasive plants
may decrease overall, however, specifically in theareas with high endemism identified in the study, itmay, in fact, double.
These findings are crucial, as these important areas,
located outside designated PAs are unlikely to be
included in official invasive plant management
programmes.

FORECASTING INVASIVE DISTRIBUTIONS AT A
LOCAL LEVEL—WITH A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVEDATA USED: 25,905 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

a Jarnevich CS, Young NE, Talbert M and Talbert C (2018)
Forecasting an invasive species’ distribution with global
distribution data, local data, and physiological information.
Ecosphere. Wiley 9(5): e02279.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2279
Author country/area: United States
Research funding: United States Geological Survey

invasive species

Widely introduced globally as a forage species forlivestock, buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris) has becomeinvasive in many parts of the world. This study ofthe species investigates differences in distribution
predictors at the global and local level—in Saguaro
National Park in Arizona, USA.
Using GBIF-mediated occurrences the authors
derived two sets of models and when comparing
local and global models, they found that while wintertemperature appears to be most important predictor
in both cases, topography variables, such as aspect ofslopes, appeared in the local models to proxy for otherclimate predictors.
CENCHRUS CILIARIS BY JAMES BAILEYHTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1838307397 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

When projecting the models into the future, results
suggests that the region—Saguaro National Park—
will become more suitable to buffelgrass in the future.

ACACIA PARADOXA BY DOUGLASEUSTONBROWN HTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/1838345538 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

SOUTH AFRICA—A GLOBAL HOTSPOT FOR ACACIAINTRODUCTIONSa Magona N, Richardson DM, Le Roux JJ and KritzingerKlopper S (2018) Even well-studied groups of alien species
might be poorly inventoried: Australian Acacia species inSouth Africa as a case study. NeoBiota. Pensoft Publishers.
Available at: http://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.39.23135
Author countries/areas: South Africa
Research funding: South African National Department ofEnvironment Affairs

Mimosa, thorntree or wattle are some of the common
names used for species belonging to Acacia, second
most speciose genus among legumes. The majorityof species are native to Australia, but South Africa isa global hotspot for foreign introductions, of which
many have become naturalized and some invasive.

literature, field surveys and GBIF.org on all Acacia
occurrrences in the country while assessing thecurrent invasion status of present species.
The authors found evidence of 141 Australian Acacia
species having been introduced to South Africa.
Of these, they confirm the current presence of 33
species. Fifteen species—including A. paradoxa
shown above—are considered invasive and five havenaturalized. The remaining 13 species have yet to
produce viable offspring.
Doubling previous estimates of Acacia species
introduced to South Africa based on data collated 40
years ago, this new study represents an important
update to informing management actions in the
country.

Taking stock of Australian Acacia species in South
Africa, this study compiled data from herbaria,

See all Invasive alien species citations at GBIF.org

invasive species

Factors restricting the distribution of invasive alien
species includes climate, topography and biotic
interactions, but the contribution of each of thesevary from global to local scale. When assessing the
local invasion potential of a species, it’s important toconsider global-scale constraints as well.

36

37

Conservation and food security

which they download occurrence records from
GBIF and from seedbank databases. Using these
combined with climatic covariates, they model thepotential distributions of all species. By comparing
the distributions with existing germplasm collections
and designated protected areas, they derive a
conservation score from which the indicator can becalculated at national, regional and global scales.
Following a recent update of the World Databaseon Protected Areas, Khoury and colleagues have
now redone the analysis and the indicator has beenformally accepted.
“This is exciting news! Our indicator will be included in
the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership website, which
is a resource for national representatives to reportprogress on these targets—in our case, on Aichi
Target 13.”

COFFEA LIBERICA BY DINESH VALKE HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/DINESH_VALKE/5597839545 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Data story DEVELOPING AN INDICATOR FOR SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT GOALS & BIODIVERSITY TARGETS USING OPEN DATADATA USED: 210,383,301 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Colin Khoury of the International Center for Tropical
Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia has been involved in thedevelopment of one of these indicators.
“When I looked at the existing indicators, there were
deficiencies, both in methodology and in data. Manygave a static number, but no indication of whether
that was enough. It doesn’t tell you that much and it
doesn’t tell you when you’re done”.

­—Colin K. Khoury, CIAT
“I fell in love with seeds and diversity in agriculture at
the beginning of my career. Since then I’ve focusedon three things: how to take care of it, how to use it
for good purposes, and finally how to raise awarenessby making sure everyone has access to as much as
possible.”
He concludes, “GBIF is one of the ways we understandliving diversity—If you can’t access information aboutit, how can you possibly preserve it?”a Khoury CK, Amariles D, Soto JS, Diaz MV, Sotelo S, Sosa
CC, Ramírez-Villegas J, Achicanoy HA, Velásquez-Tibatá J,
Guarino L, León B, Navarro-Racines C, Castañeda-Álvarez
NP, Dempewolf H, Wiersema JH and Jarvis A (2019)
Comprehensiveness of conservation of useful wild plants:
An operational indicator for biodiversity and sustainable
development targets. Ecological Indicators. Elsevier BV 98:
420–429.Available at:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.016
Author country/area: Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Peru,
United States
Research funding: United Nations, European Commission,Federal Office for the Environment (DE)Khoury, who started on the practical end of agriculture
as a farmer, returned to academia and got involved inresearch in agricultural diversity conservation. During
his years as a PhD student he spent time at the seedbank at CIAT—home of the world collection of beans
and cassava—developing a gap analysis methodology
based on modelling species occurrence data that
could help CIAT and other seed banks determine thecompleteness of their collections.

conservation

Preserving the genetic diversity of cultivatedplants and domesticated animals, as well as theirwild relatives, are priorities of several international
agreements including the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG) Target 2.5, Aichi
Biodiversity Target 13 and the Global Strategy for
Plant Conservation Target 9, and Article 5 of theInternational Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for
Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). To be able to measureprogress against these targets, a number of indicators
have been proposed and/or deployed.

To allow complete openness and transparency,
Khoury and this team released all the data compiled
and produced in the paper as part of a data paper(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2018.11.125)
published around the same time. They also createdan interactive version of the results that can be
explored online (https://ciat.cgiar.org/usefulplantsindicator). This insistence on accessible information
demonstrates how passionate Khoury and his
institution are about open data—and he fully
acknowledges that without GBIF, there would be no
indicator.

“GBIF is one of the ways we understandliving diversity—If you can’t accessinformation about it, how can you possiblypreserve it?”“We finished our project with reasonable results—but
we thought the gap analysis had further potential.
In 2017, the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership put
out a call for additions to indicators for Target 13. We
proposed our method and received funding for a 9month project to develop the indicator.”
Described in detail in a paper in Ecological Indicators,
the proposed methodology involves simple andreproducible steps—all relying on open data. First,
they create a dynamic list of relevant species for

POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION MODEL FOR COFFEA LIBERICA BASED ON OCCURRENCE LOCATIONS. THE LIGHTER COLORED BACKGROUND DISPLAYS THE NATIVECOUNTRY BOUNDARY USED TO CLIP THE MODEL; EX SITU ‘SITE WHERE GERMPLASM COLLECTED’ LOCATIONS SURROUNDED BY A CA. 50 KM BUFFER (INRED), OVER THE POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION MODEL; POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION OCCURRING WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF DESIGNATED PROTECTED AREAS.
FIGURE MODIFIED FROM KHOURY ET AL (2019) HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1016/J.ECOLIND.2018.11.016 (CC BY 4.0)

38

A GLOBAL ASSESSMENT OF FRESHWATER FISHSURVEY EFFORTDATA USED: 924,518 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Pelayo-Villamil P, Guisande C, Manjarrés-Hernández
A, Jiménez LF, Granado-Lorencio C, García-Roselló E,
González-Dacosta J, Heine J, González-Vilas L and Lobo
JM (2018) Completeness of national freshwater fish
species inventories around the world. Biodiversity andConservation. Springer Nature 27(14): 3807–3817.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1630-y
Author country/area: Colombia, Spain
Research funding: None listed

The quality of species inventories can help
identify taxonomic and geographic gaps in primarybiodiversity data, and the completeness of such
resources can direct future surveying efforts.
Relying on GBIF-mediated species occurrences,
researchers from Colombia and Spain used KnowBR,
an R package application featured in a separate
section of this review (p. 11), to assess the survey
completeness of freshwater fishes in all countries of
the world.
The completeness results from the analysis ranged
from very low, e.g. in Guinea-Bissau, to very high,e.g. in the UK. Only twenty-six nations—mainly inEurope and North America—met the requirements forhaving good inventories, while 35 countries mainly inSouthern Africa and South America were found to haveinventories of fair quality.
The freshwater fish survey completeness of theremaining 152 countries was either poor or impossible
to assess due to lack of data.

39

Using a machine-learning approach, this study
predicts the extinction risk of previously unassessed
terrestrial plant species based on GBIF-mediatedoccurrence data combined with other available open
data sources on environment and species traits.
In their analysis of more than 230,000 species,
Pelletier and colleagues predict that up to 20 per centbelong in a Red List category above ”Least Concern”(LC). They identify a core set of species consistently
predicted as high risk as candidates for detailed
assessment.
The framework presented in the study has low
computational requirements and can be employedeasily and efficiently to aid policy makers inprioritizing resources for investigating extinction
risks.

ANALYSIS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY AND RICHNESSOF PLANTS IN THE CERRADO SAVANNAH BIOMEDATA USED: 4,074,709 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Ballesteros-Mejia L, Lima JS and Collevatti RG (2018)
Spatially-explicit analyses reveal the distribution ofgenetic diversity and plant conservation status in Cerrado
biome. Biodiversity and Conservation. Springer Scienceand Business Media LLC. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1588-9
Author country/area: Brazil
Research funding: National Council for Scientific andTechnological Development (BR), Brazilian Federal Agency
for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education

Mainly focusing on species diversity, conservationassessments often neglect genetic variation despite

Using GBIF-mediated occurrences to estimate
species richess combined with environmental andanthropogenic predictors, the authors modelled
effects on genetic diversity and richness, finding
associations with temperature and precipitation.
To their surprise, however, species richness did notpredict genetic richness.
The study concludes that the northern part of the
Cerrado is a potential hotspot of genetic diversitythat should be the focus of additional studies andprotection.

CONSERVING CROP WILD RELATIVES IN SPAIN
a Rubio Teso ML, Parra-Quijano M, Torres E and Iriondo
JM (2018) Identification and assessment of the crop wild
relatives of Spain that require most urgent conservation
actions. Mediterranean Botany. Universidad Complutensede Madrid (UCM) 39(2).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.5209/mbot.60074
Author country/area: Colombia, Spain
Research funding: European Union

DATA USED: 165,790,878 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Pelletier TA, Carstens BC, Tank DC, Sullivan J and Espíndola
A (2018) Predicting plant conservation priorities on a
global scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
115(51): 13027–13032.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804098115

In a study focused on CWRs in Spain, researchers
assessed the in and ex situ conservation status ofimportant species identified according to threat level,
uniqueness and crossability. Their shortlist contained
47 species for which they used GBIF-mediatedoccurrences to determine the in situ protection by
designated protected areas (PA).

Author country/area: United States
Research funding: National Science Foundation (US)Their results showed that 85 per cent of target CWR
species have at least one accession in a germplasm
bank, and 75 per cent have populations within PAs.
However, with a target of at least five populations per
HYLOCHARIS CHRYSURA BY DOUGLAS ALENCAR GASSHTTPS://WWW.GBIF.ORG/OCCURRENCE/2242933986 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

species, only 37 per cent make the cut. The authors
also note that 11 of the 47 species are considered
endangered internationally, but not listed innational catalogues of threatened species.

INCREASING IMPACT AND FEASIBILITY OF LARGESCALE RESTORATIONDATA USED: 12,085 SPECIES OCCURRENCES

Strassburg BBN, Beyer HL, Crouzeilles R, Iribarrem A,
Barros F, de Siqueira MF, Sánchez-Tapia A, Balmford A,
Sansevero JBB, Brancalion PHS, Broadbent EN, Chazdon
RL, Filho AO, Gardner TA, Gordon A, Latawiec A, Loyola
R, Metzger JP, Mills M, Possingham HP, Rodrigues RR,
Scaramuzza CA de M, Scarano FR, Tambosi L and Uriarte M(2018) Strategic approaches to restoring ecosystems cantriple conservation gains and halve costs. Nature Ecology& Evolution. Springer Nature 3(1): 62–70. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0743-8
Author country/area: Australia, Brazil, Poland, Sweden,
United Kingdom, United States
Research funding: None listed

Fourty-seven countries have included major
ecosystem restoration targets covering 350 million
hectares by 2030 as part of their pledges to the Paris
Climate Agreement. Through Systematic Conservation
Planning (SCP) nations may maximize benefits while
minimizing costs.
Using the Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot, alarge-scale restoration target in Brazil, researcherspresent a novel prioritization approach based on linear
programming, suggested to outperform mainstream
SCP methods.
To calculate benefits, they used 1) reductions inprojected species extinctions—based on distribution
models created with data from GBIF and others—
and 2) climate change mitigation through carbon
sequestration. They used land acquistion prices andquotes from restoration companies as an estimate of
total costs.
Working from a baseline model, the authors produce
spatially explicit configurations maximizing costeffective benefits. In one compromise configuration,
they are able increase benefits by 257 per cent forbiodiversity and 105 per cent for climate change
mitigation, while reducing costs by 57 percent
compared to baseline.
The results show that multicritera spatial planning canhelp increase the impact and feasibility of large-scale
restoration.

See all Conservation and food security citations at GBIF.org

conservationconservation

The Cerrado is the most diverse savannah in theworld and the subject of a new, comprehensive study
examining patterns of plant genetic diversity acrossthe biome. Based on genetic data from existing
literature they describe a high level of genetic
richness in the northern Cerrado, however, highgenetic diversity is widespread in the biome.

To ensure food security under increased demands
and a changing climate, crop traits must adapt andyields increase. Crop wild relatives (CWR) constituteimportant gene pools for improving crops for
future generations and they should be the focus ofconservation efforts.

USING OPEN DATA TO PREDICT PLANTCONSERVATION STATUS ON A GLOBAL SCALE

When assessing the extinction risk of species,
plants are often neglected in favour of charismatic
vertebrates, despite plants being the essential
foundation in ecosystem architecture. Tools for rapid
assessments for understudied species are key toimproving conservation priorities worldwide.

being a key component representing the evolutionary
potential of species and contributing to individual
fitness and ecosystem function.

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