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Taxonomy is foundational to all biological sciences. Names allow us to organize and communicate information about biological groups. This process is critical for understanding and preserving the biodiversity of our planet. There are an estimated 8.7 million extant eukaryotes (Mora et al. 2011) and possibly as many as 1 trillion microbial species (Locey and Lennon 2016), with untold numbers of extinct taxa yet to be discovered in the fossil record. Accounting for all these taxa and maintaining their nomenclatural resources is one of the great challenges in biology. A few major hurdles in overcoming this challenge are the inability to find, share, and update taxonomic resources efficiently in real time. Efforts to standardize and continually update taxonomic names in a sustainable way have been limited. The problem is complex, and solutions must deal with the large backlog of names, a constant stream of new names, the confusing merging and splitting of taxonomic synonyms, the subjective nature of taxonomic concepts, and the fundamental limitations on available expertise and curators' time to prepare and maintain such resources. Hyperdiverse groups such as arthropods are especially challenging as there are relatively few experts on any given lineage and changes in taxonomy can be rapid as new species are continually being discovered and described. After struggling to wrangle taxonomic resources in support of specimen digitization efforts, I began development of TaxoTracker as a proof-of-concept, web-based platform for facilitating expert curation and dissemination of biological taxonomies. TaxoTracker is still in development, but its current and planned functionalities will be shown through a combination of demonstration and discussion. TaxoTracker identifies and implements features that attempt to simplify the production and maintenance of expert-curated resources, while also limiting the responsibilities that are placed on individual experts who are often already overburdened and underfunded. These features include: Centralized, searchable, and easily obtained resources in useful formats Community-driven, citation-based curatorial suggestions Expert-reviewed curatorial recommendations Consensus-driven curatorial decisions Effort tracking and credit for suggestions and reviews Centralized, searchable, and easily obtained resources in useful formats Community-driven, citation-based curatorial suggestions Expert-reviewed curatorial recommendations Consensus-driven curatorial decisions Effort tracking and credit for suggestions and reviews
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Building a community-based taxonomic resource for digitization of parasites and their hosts
Abstract Classification of the biological diversity on Earth is foundational to all areas of research within the natural sciences. Reliable biological nomenclatural and taxonomic systems facilitate efficient access to information about organisms and their names over time. However, broadly sharing, accessing, delivering, and updating these resources remains a persistent problem. This barrier has been acknowledged by the biodiversity data sharing community, yet concrete efforts to standardize and continually update taxonomic names in a sustainable way remain limited. High diversity groups such as arthropods are especially challenging as available specimen data per number of species is substantially lower than vertebrate or plant groups. The Terrestrial Parasite Tracker Thematic Collections Network project developed a workflow for gathering expert-verified taxonomic names across all available sources, aligning those sources, and publishing a single resource that provides a model for future endeavors to standardize digital specimen identification data. The process involved gathering expert-verified nomenclature lists representing the full taxonomic scope of terrestrial arthropod parasites, documenting issues experienced, and finding potential solutions for reconciliation of taxonomic resources against large data publishers. Although discordance between our expert resources and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility are relatively low, the impact across all taxa affects thousands of names that correspond to hundreds of thousands of specimen records. Here, we demonstrate a mechanism for the delivery and continued maintenance of these taxonomic resources, while highlighting the current state of taxon name curation for biodiversity data sharing.
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- PAR ID:
- 10475129
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Insect Systematics and Diversity
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2399-3421
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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