Managing Parasite, Pathogen, and Host Data in Arctos
Channel: ARCTOS
Date: 2022-05-10

Presenters: Mariel Campbell, Sara Brant, Andrew Doll, Gabor Racz

Abstract: This webinar will address challenges in managing parasite collections and data in natural history collections and will review the suite of tools in the Arctos Collection Management System  (https://arctosdb.org/) that enable management and data linkage of parasites, pathogens, and hosts. One of the primary challenges to managing parasites in any museum collection management system is that parasite specimens have typically been archived in separate collections from the host specimen. Similarly, pathogen specimens, samples, and data have been collected and managed by public health and wildlife disease surveillance researchers, organizations, and databases not historically integrated with museums. Yet host specimens and associated archives managed in natural history museums provide a critical resource to validate the identification, taxonomy, collecting event, and provenance of hosts, parasites and pathogens. Parasites, pathogens, and hosts share a common collecting event, which can be tracked through assigning a unique identifier at the time of collection to follow all derivate specimens and samples as they are processed and archived in separate collections. This webinar will review Arctos tools that enable 1) sharing of collector and collecting event identifiers between parasites and hosts; 2) creation of reciprocal url-based relationships between parasites and hosts archived in the same collection, in different Arctos collections and institutions, and with external institutions and databases; 3) documenting host and parasite relationships when voucher specimens for one or the other were not preserved; 4) testing for presence of different parasites/pathogens, including the ability to document presence/absence; and 5) search and discovery of host/parasite/pathogen relationships in Arctos and through partner databases such as GloBI (https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/).


When: Tuesday, May 10, 2022 at 3:00pm ET/1:00pm MT (19:00 UTC)