GBits

no. 41 Oct 2014

free and open access to biodiversity data

GBIF 21 st Governing Board
Meeting

GOVERNING BOARD MEETING � � � � 1
GBIF 21st Governing Board Meeting
GB21 Highlights

GOVERNANCE � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3
GBIF publishes Annual Report 2013

GBIF NETWORK � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3
Uruguay joins as Voting Participant
Biodiversity Heritage Library,
Naturalis and Canadensys now GBIF
Participants

DATA PUBLISHING � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3
New partnership targets data persistence

CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT � � � � � � � 4
GBIF announces 2014 capacity
enhancement grant recipients
Mentoring project updates

NEW DATA � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 5First day of Governing Board. Photo: GBIF Secretariat

Delegates to GBIF’s Governing Board gathered in the
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, from 16-18 September
for its 21st meeting (GB21), hosted by the Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests, and the Wildlife Instituteof India. 89 participants representing 32 countries
attended the meeting, which approved GBIF’s budget
and work programme update, endorsed a new approach
to licencing of data published through GBIF, anddiscussed some of the successes and challenges ofsetting up biodiversity information facilities. The event
also included meetings of GBIF’s advisory committees
and a public symposium that highlighted GBIF’s
recent achievements and upcoming plans, examplesof national-scale tools and services, and researchusing GBIF-mediated data to support sustainable
development.

eBird
Belgium
Chile
Czech Republic
Norway and India
RussiaThailand
United Kingdom

AROUND THE NETWORK � � � � � � � � 7
BIODIVERSITY DATA IN USE � � � � � 8
EVENTS � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 11

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GBits
GB21 HIGHLIGHTS
The Indian Minister for Environment, Forests andClimate Change, Prakash Javadekar opened themeeting with praise for the GBIF community’s
leadership in developing capacity in biodiversity

evaluate and endorse prospective data publishers,
and data holders with no links to current GBIF
nodes will have new options for sharing their data
through the network.
read more News release
Staff from the GBIF Secretariat kicked off the
Public Symposium 2014, sharing backgroundabout recent developments to enrich the data
accessible through GBIF.org; plans to attach DigitalObject Identifiers (DOI) to all datasets, which will
help strengthen attribution and citation of data
accessed through GBIF; new developments in
GBIF’s capacity enhancement programme; and the
network’s contribution to global processes such as
the CBD. GBIF national Participants from Ireland,
Benin, the United Kingdom and Australia related
examples showing how informatics investment
and collaboration support national priorities on
biodiversity.

Prakash Javedakar, Indian Minister for Environment, Forests andClimate Change, opens GB21. © 2014, Rupa Bhardwaj / WII

informatics. Stating his commitment to developinga robust national infrastructure for biodiversity
data, he told delegates India would negotiate
to become a full Voting Participant of GBIF. The
country has been an Associate Participant since2003.
read more News release
The executive secretary of the Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD), Braulio Dias,
delivered a message to GB21, read to delegatesby the Governing Board chair, Peter Schalk. In his
statement, Dias called upon both GBIF Participants
and the CBD constituency “to recognize thebenefits of a viable, active and strong GBIF,
primarily to benefit countries in having accessto information to guide their own sustainable
development agenda.”
download Letter from Braulio Dias
Following extensive consultations, the Governing
Board approved new approaches to licencing andendorsement of data published through GBIF.
In future, all species occurrence datasets within
the network will be associated with one of threemachine-readable licences equivalent to Creative
Commons CC0, CC-BY and CC-BY-NC. GBIF willencourage publishers to adopt the most open
license possible. Secretariat staff will guide thepreparation of new guidelines to help GBIF nodes2

2

Tony Rees, 2014 Ebbe Nielsen Prize winner. Photo: GBIF Secretariat

Ebbe Nielsen Prize winner Tony Rees started
the afternoon session off with an overview offour innovative biodiversity informatics tools
recognized by the award. Following a brief video
update on 2013 Young Researchers Award winnerEmma Gomez, attendees heard about 2014 YRA
recipients Caoimhe Marshall and Vijay Barve.
Science committee chair Rod Page then introduced
the Ebbe Nielsen Challenge, which will seek tospark innovative uses of GBIF-mobilized data (moredetails to follow soon).
The symposium concluded with experts from Spain,
the United Kingdom, the United States and India
presenting on their uses of data accessed through
GBIF to support conservation, food security, publichealth, invasive species control, and humaninnovation.

Aug 2011

Videos of each speaker are available on-demand on
GBIF.org along with their presentations, and users
can also watch the complete video playlist on both
Vimeo and YouTube.
learn more Videos and presentations
Public Symposium 2014 brochure
watch Public Symposium on Vimeo
Public Symposium on YouTube

GOVERNANCE
GBIF releases
Annual Report 2013
GBIF has published
its annual report for
2013, summarizing
activities across the
network. Among theyear’s highlights werethe launch of GBIF.org,
the introduction of realtime data indexing andpublication of the Global
Biodiversity Informatics
Outlook.
The report illustrates numerous collaborative
projects, profiles data publication and use in the
GBIF’s six regions, and presents a wide range of
metrics about access and use GBIF-mediated data
through GBIF.org.
download Annual Report 2013

GBIF NETWORK
Uruguay joins as Voting Participant
Uruguay has joined the GBIF network as a fullVoting Participant, becoming the eighth Participantfrom GBIF’s Latin American region and the 38th
national government with full representation in
GBIF.
Gabriel Aintablian, director of Dirreción deInnovación, Ciencia y Tecnología para el Desarrollo(DICYT), signed the MOU with the GBIF Secretariat
on behalf of the country’s Ministry of Education andCulture.

no. 41 Oct 2014

Biodiversity Heritage Library, Naturalis
and Canadensys now GBIF Participants
GBIF has welcomed three new organizations as
Associate Participants. These signatories to the
GBIF Memorandum of Understanding participate invarious ways in the network’s activities and havenon-voting representation on the GBIF Governing
Board.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a
consortium of biodiversity-related libraries thatprovides open access to biodiversity information
through web based tools and services. BHL has
digitized millions of pages of taxonomic literature,
representing over 100,000 volumes that include
information on more than 150 million speciesnames. GBIF users can already access literaturereferences in BHL through links on the taxon pages
on GBIF.org.
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, based in Leiden, The
Netherlands, holds a biological collection of morethan 37 million specimens. In 2013 it merged withETI Bioinformatics which has been an Associate
Participant since 2001.
Canadensys, based at the Université de Montreal,
provides access to biodiversity information heldin biological collections across Canada andrepatriates data from over 200 countries. It hasdeveloped a range of tools and resources for
publishing data associated with use of the GBIF
Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).
read more BHL announcement
Naturalis and Canadensys announcement

DATA PUBLISHING

New partnership with DataONEtargets data persistence
The GBIF Secretariat and the Data Observation
Network for Earth (DataONE) have signed amemorandum of cooperation to design a pilot
repository that archives datasets shared throughGBIF. The partnership will also support DataONE’sefforts to improve its own data indexing services bybuilding on GBIF’s solution for handling large-scale
tabular data.

read more News release33

GBitsOther areas addressed by the agreement include
finding efficient ways to exchange ecological data,using the GBIF network to connect additional
members to DataONE, and informing further
development of GBIF’s work to produce efficient
tools for working with very large quantities ofoccurrence data.
This partnership will open up new possibilities
for improving GBIF’s services. For example, GBIF
could offer a repository for new datasets derived
from GBIF-mediated data after cleaning. Improving
the retrieval and traceability of data used in priorresearch will enable subsequent researchers bothto replicate published studies and to benefit from‘reference datasets’ with higher quality assurance.
read more News release

CAPACITY ENHANCEMENTGBIF announces 2014 capacity
enhancement grant recipients

network for invasive alien species across subSaharan Africa, guided by GBIF Mauritania•

An intensive open-source ‘hackathon’ organizedby Species 2000 targeted at enhancing
the skills and capacity of GBIF’s European
Participants to produce national species
checklists
read more 2014 capacity enhancement
projects

Mentoring project update
Belgium, Mauritania and Togo
The GBIF national nodes from Mauritania, Togo andBelgium co-organized a data publication workshop
at the École Normale Supérieure de Nouakchott on
2-4 September 2014. About 15 participants fromvarious academic and government institutions
learned about GBIF, data publishing and use, witha particular focus on how to prepare, clean andpublish data through the GBIF Integrated Publishing
Toolkit.

The GBIF Secretariat has announced the award ofcapacity enhancement grants to five projects acrossits international network. In total, the projects will
engage 31 partners from 29 countries and twointernational organizations, range across five of
GBIF’s six regions, and leverage €40,000 of funding
with an additional €70,000.
“With their focus on data digitization, data quality,
data standards, technology development andinvasive alien species, these projects provide forbroad engagement and exchange across topics ofshared interest for the GBIF network,” said Donald
Hobern, executive secretary of the GBIF Secretariat.
Funded projects include:•

A Latin American initiative led by SiB Colombia
to introduce systematic improvements to thequality of biodiversity data published throughthe GBIF network•

A second Latin American effort headed by
CYTED (The Iberoamerican Programme for
Science and Technology for Development) to
expand capacity for digitizing and publishingdata from scientific literature, images andmultimedia

•

•
4

4

Mentoring led by Mexico’s CONABIO to use thePlinian Core Standard for species information
to increase the quality and interoperability of
GBIF-mediated data
Bilingual training and exchange to establish
coordinated early warning and response

Workshop in Nouakchott, Mauritania © Koudjou, GBIF Togo

Participants published five Mauritanian datasets(occurrence data for the National Herbarium ofMauritania and crocodiles, and checklists for plantsof the Banc d’Arguin National Park, Fabaceae, andreptiles); and two Togolese datasets (checklists on
Algae and Fabaceae). MrBIF is also preparing a data
publication convention to facilitate data sharing
between all country institutions and GBIF.
read more Workshop materials
IPT Togo
IPT Mauritania

Colombia and Brazil
In August, Brazil hosted the fourth and final
mentoring meeting at the National Laboratory for
Scientific Computing (LNCC), in Petrópolis, Rio deAug 2011

Janeiro state. Christian Gendreau from Canadensys
was invited to participate in developers’
discussions and share his experience.
During the week-long programme, participants
discussed how to improve cooperation anddeveloped the WingLongitude concept: a neutral
code repository where teams can share software,thus facilitating its use and contribution by others.

no. 41 Oct 2014

Belgium
The Research Institute for Nature and Forest(INBO), has published the GPS tracking of lesser
black-backed gull and herring gull breeding at theBelgian coast. This dataset contains over 440,000
occurrences recorded in 2013 by 27 GPS trackers
mounted on 22 lesser black-backed gulls (Larus
fuscus) and five herring gulls (Larus argentatus)
breeding on the Belgian coast. These data wererecorded as part of INBO’s terrestrial observatory
for LifeWatch, in collaboration with Uva-BiTS andthe Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) The use of GPS
trackers enhances study of the migration patterns
and habitat use of the gulls, removing bias towards
locations where observers can see the birds. The
dataset demonstrated how use of individual ID
codes when publishing to GBIF enables users to
track movement of individual animals over time.

Fourth Colombia and Brazil mentoring meeting © 2014, Pedro
Guimarães, SiBBr

They also decided to intensify the common use andimprovement of their respective biodiversity data
management software. The biodiversity information
community is also invited to participate andcontribute to this open software platform.
Through this mentoring Project, the Information
System for Colombian Biodiversity (SiB Colombia)
helped SiB Brazil to install a platform to publish
data from Brazil using the GBIF Integrated
Publishing Toolkit, and to develop their own
data portal using the GBIF source code. It also
took advantage of the LNCC’s expertise on highperformance computing to execute species’
distribution models in large scale.
read more WingLongitude

NEW DATAeBird

The annual update of the eBird Observational
Dataset (EOD) has pushed the number ofoccurrence records published through GBIF pasthalf a billion.
eBird, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the
National Audubon Society, is a vast collection ofhigh-quality observations collected by professional
ornithologists, recreational birders and citizen
scientists alike.

Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus). Photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/7UqCuV

The Belgium Biodiversity Information Facility(BeBIF) digitized and published 5,583 observation
records of plants and fungi derived from The Flora
of Northumberland and Durham (N.J. Winch 1831).
Dr. Q. Groom of the Botanic Garden Meise initiatedthe digitization of this historic literature reference
by providing a semantically enhanced XML file,from which academic publishers Pensoft created asemantically enhanced HTML re-publication.
This enriched online re-publication of the Floramarries the details of the original book with theadvantages brought by digitization, such as data
extraction and collation, distribution and scientificuse and application of the content. This publication
aims to support ongoing research on the botany ofnorth-eastern England.

read more News release55GBitsChile
GBIF Chile has mobilized six national datasetsfor publication through GBIF.org from the Chilean
environment ministry—the first datasets from thecountry to be published via GBIF and the result of amentoring project with partners in Costa Rica.

.......

Natural History Museum of Oslo (NHM-UiO) has
published four datasets following a Norwegiancollaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India(the GBIF national node for India). These datasets
includes specimens originating in India now locatedin the natural history collections at the University
Museum of the Norwegian University of Scienceand Technology (NTNU), the University Museum of
the University of Bergen (UiB) and Natural History
Museum at the University of Oslo (NHM-UiO).
The same project yielded an Indian dataset of 305
camera-trap occurrences of tiger (Panthera tigris
tigris) from Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand
state and a guide for publishing camera trap data
produced by the GBIF Secretariat with Indian andNorwegian partners.

RussiaBlack vulture (Coragyps atratus). Photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/e9cXxr

The occurrence datasets comprise 15,541 records
and include collections of herpetological specimens,
flatworms (Platyhelminthes), crustaceans and algae
from Chile’s Museum National of Natural History;
and wildlife observations by Charif Tala, GBIF
national Node manager and head of department ofChile Ministry of Environment.

Czech Republic
The National Museum in Prague has publishedits first data through GBIF.org. Seven datasets
consisting of over 55,000 species occurrencesfrom the museum’s paleontological fauna andflora, botanical, entomological, mycologicaland zoological collections can now be accessed
through GBIF.org. The museum also published aliterary description of Iranian lizards, comprising
8,525 georeferenced records covering 41% of Iran.
This particular dataset is described by a data
paper presenting a comprehensive summary ofthe distribution of the lizards of Iran. Because theCzech Republic is not yet a national Participant
in GBIF, the Consortium of European Taxonomic
Facilities (CETAF), a GBIF Associate Participant,endorsed the museum as a new publisher.

Norway and India
As part of a pilot project to demonstrate capacity
building for the Intergovernmental Platform for
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the66

The Moscow University Herbarium (MW), a new
GBIF data publisher, made available a grid-based
dataset on vascular plant distribution on the
Meschera National Park, Vladimir Oblast, Russia.
As the second largest herbarium of Russia, MW
Herbarium has a wide expertise in vascular plants
and Eurasian bryophytes.
This dataset is based on grid scheme and contains
over 22,600 records of unique occurrences of 812
species of vascular plants from the Meshchera
National Park. This initial publication of data
through GBIF.org will be enriched with about
100,000 additional records from MW Herbarium.
Because Russia is not yet a GBIF national
Participant, GBIF Finland (a Voting Participant)endorsed Moscow University Herbarium as a newdata publisher.

ThailandThe Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Natural
History Museum (PSU Museum) published the firstoccurrence dataset from a Thai institution via
GBIF.org. The museum used an IPT installation to share
its amphibian collection, comprising 600 species
occurrence records, 90 per cent of which relate tospecimens collected from the Thailand peninsula,
one of Southeast Asia’s biodiversity hotspots.
The PSU Museum expects to share specimen
data from a variety of natural history collections,
including macro-algae, plankton, invertebrates,
vertebrates and fossils. Once published, themuseum anticipates ongoing updates to the datafrom these active collections.

Aug 2011

no. 41 Oct 2014

GBIF contributes to biodiversity
conference in China
Over 300 scientists and experts attended the11th National Conference on Biodiversity Science
and Conservation in Shenyang, China, in August,organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS). Dr. Ma Keping, Secretary General of theChinese National Committee of DIVERSITAS, andhead of the CAS delegation to GBIF, chaired theopening ceremony.
Common Tree Frog (polypedates leucomystax). Photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
https://flic.kr/p/bfmmQK

Because Thailand is not yet a GBIF national
Participant, the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (aGBIF Associate Participant) endorsed the museum
as a new data publisher.

The mission of the biennial conference is topromote academic research and collaboration in
the fields of biodiversity and conservation. This
year’s conference included a thematic session on
biodiversity informatics.

United Kingdom
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory(EMBL) has published a dataset comprised of morethan 4.6 million geographically tagged genetic
sequences, piloting the publication of genomic data
through GBIF.

AROUND THE NETWORKGBIF in Latin America
Six participants from Latin America and one
observer from Uruguay attended the fourth GBIF
Latin American Nodes meeting in Petrópolis, Brazil,on on September 1-3, on the heels of a week-longmentoring programme between Colombia andBrazil (see project update above).
After presenting ongoing project and initiatives, theattendees discussed how to improve regional andinternational collaboration and outlined a regional
work plan. The participating nodes identified
collaborative development of biodiversity data
portals, capacity enhancement and engagementof new member as areas of priority. Core activities
around capacity enhancement will focus on data
quality, digital documentation and Plinian Core
species information.
The work plan also made specific mention ofdevelopment of biodiversity data portals throughregional initiatives like the mentoring project
between Brazil and Colombia, and the international
collaboration with the Atlas of Living Australia(ALA) working group.

Burke Chih-Jen Ko from GBIF Secretariat leads the workshop on
biodiversity informatics © 2014, CNC-DIVERSITASThe GBIF Secretariat helped to organize a workshop
alongside this session led by Burke Chih-Jen Ko,
which included a demonstration of geo-referencing
and data publishing using the GBIF Integrated
Publishing Toolkit (IPT). The workshop helped
increase knowledge of the GBIF data publishing
workflow in China, while enhancing practical data
management skills among scientists.

Mass digitization of pinned insectsfrom Finland
Digitarium, the digitization centre of the Finnish
Museum of Natural History and University ofEastern Finland, has released a high-performancesystem for digitizing pinned insects.
As its first test, Digitarium digitized the beetle
collection of Gunnar Blomvist of Joutseno for the
Finnish Museum of Natural History, in two months.
This beetle collection has 15,000 specimens andcomprises about two thirds of all Coleopteranspecies found in Finland, including some 100
threatened species.
77

GBitsI3B workshop focuses on species
distribution models
The Iberoamerican Infrastructure for Biodiversity
Information (I3B) has held the third of its four
planned regional training and experience exchange
activities.
The June workshop in Tepoztlan, Mexico, focusedon the fundamentals and the future of ecologicalniche modeling. Attendees included 30 graduate
students and young researchers in the fields ofbiogeography and conservation biology along withbiodiversity conservation planning professionals
from nine I3B network members in nine countries:
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain.

BIODIVERSITY DATA IN USE
The Secretariat maintains a programme to monitor
use of GBIF-mediated data in scientific literature.
The following peer-reviewed articles represent somerecent highlights.
Amirkia, V., et al. 2014. Alkaloids as drug leads– A predictive structural and biodiversity-based
analysis. Phytochemistry Letters.
Are alkaloids underrepresented in modern
medicine? The authors used GBIF-mediatedoccurrence records for known plant sources ofalkaloids, in part, to examine potential reasons fora steep drop in the number of new alkaloid-based
medicines despite their 4,000-year history ofhuman healing.
Candela, L., et al. 2014. An infrastructure-oriented
approach for supporting biodiversity research.
Ecological Informatics.
The authors introduce a set of tools developedby the D4Science Data Infrastructure to supportacquisition and preparation of species occurrence
data from GBIF, OBIS and other sources, seeking
to reduce the time researchers spend in data
quality assessment and curation.

I3B workshop © 2014, Cristina Villaverde / GBIF.ES

The general objective of the workshop was to offer
theoretical and practical overviews of ecologicalniche modeling applications and limitations alongwith recent developments in the field. Attendees
committed to implementing and disseminating
the contents learned in the workshop within
their countries while seeking to make biologicalinformation relating to their areas of study readily
available.

Crafton, R. E. 2014. Modeling invasion risk forcoastal marine species utilizing environmental andtransport vector data. Hydrobiologia.
To identify coastal marine areas at risk of invasion
by five coastal marine crab species, the author
relied on GBIF-mediated data to generate amodel that combines where they are both likely
to arrive and able to survive. While assessments
could adapt this focus on introduction likelihoodand environmental suitability to other marine
and non-marine species, they hinge on having
occurrence data that represent the complete rangeof conditions under which a species can survive.

Mexico’s CONABIO and GBIF Spain (GBIF.ES) coorganized the workshop, which was sponsored by
GBIF Associate Participant CYTED.
learn more Training resources		
Results of the first two workshops
watch Workshop videos

Asian shore crab (Hemigrapsus sanguineus). Photo CC bY-NC-SA 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/21933510@N07/10929759593

88

Aug 2011

Faulkner, K., et al. 2014. A simple, rapid
methodology for developing invasive species watch
lists. Biological Conservation.
To help develop biosecurity schemes for resourcepoor regions, the authors proposed a rapid,
cost-effective method of creating watch lists
for invasive alien species (IAS). With the helpof GBIF-mediated data on 419 invasive species,
the technique uses consistent predictors of
IAS success—past precedents, environmental
suitability and introduction effort—to produce an
initial assessment of key threats.

Bitou Bush flowers and fruits (Chrysanthemoides monilifera).
Photo CC bY-NC-ND2.0 https://flic.kr/p/6UGDf1

Gasc, A., et al. 2014. Biodiversity Sampling Usinga Global Acoustic Approach: Contrasting Sites with
Microendemics in New Caledonia. PLoS ONE.
The researchers’ proposed acoustical method for
rapid biodiversity assessment in New Caledonia
responds to the Pacific island’s unique spatial
structure and the microendemic distributionof many of its species. Existing inventory,
phylogentic and GBIF-mediated data helped guidethe selection of three mountain sites for validating
the test of the methods for broad spatial andtemporal scales elsewhere.
Harsch, M. A., et al. 2014. Species distributions
shift downward across western North America.
Global Change Biology.
Drawing upon GBIF.org and other sources foroccurrence data on 296 plant species fromwestern North America, researchers explored how
moisture stress and other direct physiologicalshifts may contribute to distributions for 63%
of the plants shifting towards lower elevations
despite consistent warming across the study area.

no. 41 Oct 2014

Higgins, S. I., et al. 2014. Invasive plants havebroader physiological niches. Proceeding of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America.
Species tolerant of a broader range ofenvironmental conditions are likelier to becomeinvasive, report the authors, who compared their
physiologically based species distribution modelwith GBIF-mediated data on exotic occurrences of
749 Australian acacia and eucalypt tree species
over the past century.
Hjarding, A., et al. 2014. Red List assessments ofEast African chameleons: a case study of why weneed experts. Oryx.
After comparing GBIF-mediated data on
geographical distribution of 35 species ofchameleons endemic to East Africa with datacompiled by a taxonomic expert, the authors
conclude that online databases are not alone
adequate to assess the threatened status of
species.
Ikeda, D. H., et al. 2014. Incorporating Climate
Change and Exotic Species into Forecasts of
Riparian Forest Distribution. PloS ONE.
The authors applied GBIF-mediated data to their
examination of potential climate change impacts
on suitable habitat across arid portions of thewestern United States for four riparian species,
three natives (Populus fremontii, Salix gooddingii
and Salix exigua) and Tamarix, a now-widespreadexotic. While results suggest that P. fremontii
could unexpectedly see the greatest range
increase, Tamarix’ effect on distributions of all
three natives highlight the need to account for
both direct and indirect climate change effects.
Pigott, D. M., et al. 2014. Mapping the zoonotic
niche of Ebola virus disease in Africa. eLife.
Researchers mapped the areas of Africa
potentially at risk from outbreaks of Ebola virus
disease, based on the environmental niche ofthree bat species believed to act as reservoir
hosts of the disease. While human outbreaks
such as the one currently affecting West Africa
have been rare, the study used GBIF-mediatedbat occurrence data to identify at-risk areas with a
combined human population of 22 million across
22 countries in Central and West Africa.

99GBitsPinkernell, S., et al. 2014. Potential effects ofclimate change on the distribution range of themain silicate sinker of the Southern Ocean. Ecology
and Evolution.
Using GBIF-mediated data to build a
species distribution model for Fragilariopsis
kerguelensis—a dominant diatom species
throughout the Antarctic Circumpolar Current—the
authors established important pilot for this rarelymodeled group and explored anticipated effects ofclimate change on a main driver of the biologicalsilicate pump.

Schulp, C. J. E., et al. 2014. Wild food in Europe:
A synthesis of knowledge and data of terrestrial
wild food as an ecosystem service. Ecological
Economics.
While collecting and consuming wild food isrecognized as an important cultural ecosystemservice, quantitative measures of these provisions
have been harder to come by. The authors
synthesized data for wild food species through
GBIF and other sources, seeking to use the densityof occurrences to quantify and map the value ofthe wild game and plants consumed throughout
Europe.
Singh, G., et al. 2014. Spatial Extent Models for
Natural Language Phrases Involving Directional
Containment. Transactions in GIS.
The presence of millions of non-geocoded records
mediated by GBIF sparked the authors to explore
how to assign spatial extents to gazeteer-stylenames like ‘central northern California’. Using
the two-volume Ornithological Gazetteer of Brazil(Paynter and Traylor 1991), they compared andtested spatial interpretations of multiple natural
language phrases in hope of deriving consistent,
recommended approaches.
Shabani, F., et al. 2014. Distribution of datepalms in the Middle East based on future climate
scenarios. Experimental AgricultureWith its specific adaptations to hot, arid desert
oases, date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) could
face dramatic effects from climate change. Using
occurrence data drawn from GBIF, other data
sources and scientific literature, the authors
found that Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran may see
the greatest impacts on the distribution of thisimportant and profitable crop, while Israel, Jordan
and western Syria may increase in suitability.

Genome-wide genetic diversity accross the metazoan tree of life
© 2014, authors c/o Nature Publishing Group.

Romiguier, J., et al. 2014. Comparative population
genomics in animals uncovers the determinants ofgenetic diversity. Nature.
Genetic diversity measures the variation observed
between DNA sequences from distinct individuals
of a given species. Supported by GBIF-mediatedspecies occurrence data, researchers investigatedgenetic diversity for 76 animals and found thatcrucial trait to be parental investment: short-lived
and highly fecund species are more geneticallydiverse than long-lived or low-fecundity species
with brooding ability.
10

10

Tingley, R., et al. 2014. Realized niche shift during
a global biological invasion. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America.
Using occurrence data for the cane toad (Rhinella
marina) accessed through GBIF and several
other sources, the authors sought to improveforecasting accuracy of the spread of invasive
alien species. This investigation combines aphysiologically mechanistic model of evolved
environmental tolerances, or fundamental nicheshifts, with correlative models based biotic andabiotic conditions in the invaded range (realized
niche shifts).

Aug 2011

Robertson, T., et al. 2014. The GBIF Integrated
Publishing Toolkit: Facilitating the Efficient
Publishing of Biodiversity Data on the Internet.
PLoS ONE.
Working with partners from VertNET in the UnitedStates and INBO in Belgium, developers at the GBIF
Secretariat described the features and functionsof the Integrated Publishing Toolkit software. The
discussion outlines the impetus and creation of
the IPT, its continuing evolution, and its impact
on the biodiversity research community and data
publishing.

no. 41 Oct 2014

EVENTS
Meetings and conferences
COP 12: Conference of the Parties to the CBD
6-17 October 2014, Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea
African Mountains Regional Forum, 201422-24 October 2014, Arusha, Tanzania
2014 TDWG Conference
27-31 October 2014, Jönköping, Sweden
IUCN World Parks Congress
12-19 November 2014, Sydney, Australia
2nd International Ocean Research Conference
17-21 November 2014, Barcelona, Spain
Arctic Biodiversity Congress
2-4 December 2014, Trondheim, Norway

GBIF Vision A world in which biodiversity information is freely and universallyavailable for science, society, and a sustainable future.
GBIF Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15
DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
http://www.gbif.org/

Tel+45 35 32 14 70
Fax+45 35 32 14 80
Email info@gbif.org
GBits Archive http://www.gbif.org/newsroom/newsletter1111GBits1212