Search

DiSSCo Flanders aims at developing a standardised natural science collections management infrastructure, ensuring proper long-term conservation, and future re-usage of the collections. Meise Botanic Garden coordinates the Flemish consortium. This four-year project, funded by the FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders), started in January 2021. The consortium brings together both the more classical ‘museum’ collections (Meise Botanic Garden, Ghent University Museum), with research collections (Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Flanders Marine Institute, universities), and living collections (Belgian Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta, Zoo of Antwerp (Poo 2022)). Many of the research collections are smaller orphan collections, lacking a (full-time) curator, for which collection management is not the core business of the hosting institute. The Belgian federal DiSSCo members are associated with the project, allowing close collaboration between European, national and regional (digital) collection management inititatives. Building on the expertise of the European DiSSCo-related projects, an initial high-level inventory and assessment of the collections has been made and will provide a better understanding of the collections landscape in Flanders (Van Baelen 2022). This step in the digitization will increase the findability of the diverse regional collections and highlight the available knowledge to the research community. Close collaboration with the TDWG Collections Descriptions interest group and the development of the Latimer Core standard (Woodburn 2021) will ensure maximal interoperability of the collection data. In order to be relevant for research, the Flemish collections need to be more interconnected and linked to other data sources. To ensure that collection data is adhering to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Resuable) and ready to connect to the DiSSCo research infrastructure, DiSSCo Flanders will have a large focus on the collection(s) management system (CMS). Depending on the needs and specificities of each collection, a strategy will be chosen to implement and/or collection data will be migrated to (an) optimised system(s). Parallel to the digital inventory and CMS choice, the consortium addresses specific themes in the format of working groups. Most of the institutes have identified that their molecular collection (DNA, tissues) has not been properly acknowledged as a separate long-term collection. Challenges such as the storage and curation of e-DNA and environmental samples (e.g., soil) have been identified. Very often it will only be feasible to add basic data in the CMS and essential data is not available to the researchers. DiSSCo Flanders invests in the enrichment of specimen data to ensure that a maximal amount of information becomes available to the community. This can be accomplished either through the use of citizen science/crowdsourcing using the DoeDat platform (Groom 2018), or by using machine learning techniques performed by the IDLab at Ghent University (Thirukokaranam Chandrasekar 2021). Besides the technical aspects of the DiSSCo research infrastructure, the consortium is covering topics such as data publication, legal aspects of collections, standard operating procedures, etc. through knowledge sharing and active dialog.

Editorial Note: “This response to Collareta et al. (2020) was reviewed by several taxonomists, all who expressed a degree of misgiving about the editorial processes and protocols involved in the revision of the Thoracica and publication of this revision in WoRMS. It is critical that future editors ensure that any taxonomic revision is supported by peer‐reviewed publication.”

Source at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.04.050. Polar marine regions are facing rapid changes induced by climate change, with consequences for local faunal populations, but also for overall ecosystem functioning, goods and services. Yet given the complexity of polar marine ecosystems, predicting the mode, direction and extent of these consequences remains challenging. Trait-based approaches are increasingly adopted as a tool by which to explore changes in functioning, but trait information is largely absent for the high latitudes. Some understanding of trait–function relationships can be gathered from studies at lower latitudes, but given the uniqueness of polar ecosystems it is questionable whether these relationships can be directly transferred. Here we discuss the challenges of using trait-based approaches in polar regions and present a roadmap of how to overcome them by following six interlinked steps: (1) forming an active, international research network, (2) standardizing terminology and methodology, (3) building and crosslinking trait databases, (4) conducting coordinated trait-function experiments, (5) implementing traits into models, and finally, (6) providing advice to management and stakeholders. The application of trait-based approaches in addition to traditional species-based methods will enable us to assess the effects of rapid ongoing changes on the functioning of marine polar ecosystems. Implementing our roadmap will make these approaches more easily accessible to a broad community of users and consequently aid understanding of the future polar oceans.

The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017. WoRMS is a unique database: there is no comparable global database for marine species, which is driven by a large, global expert community, is supported by a Data Management Team and can rely on a permanent host institute, dedicated to keeping WoRMS online. Over the past ten years, the content of WoRMS has grown steadily, and the system currently contains more than 242,000 accepted marine species. WoRMS has not yet reached completeness: approximately 2,000 newly described species per year are added, and editors also enter the remaining missing older names–both accepted and unaccepted–an effort amounting to approximately 20,000 taxon name additions per year. WoRMS is used extensively, through different channels, indicating that it is recognized as a high-quality database on marine species information. It is updated on a daily basis by its Editorial Board, which currently consists of 490 taxonomic and thematic experts located around the world. Owing to its unique qualities, WoRMS has become a partner in many large-scale initiatives including OBIS, LifeWatch and the Catalogue of Life, where it is recognized as a high-quality and reliable source of information for marine taxonomy.

The importance of describing species patterns and the underlying processes explaining these patterns is essential to assess the status and future evolution of marine ecosystems. This requires biological information on functional and structural species traits such as feeding ecology, body size, reproduction, life history, etc. To accommodate this need, the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) (WoRMS Editorial Board 2017) is expanding its content with trait information (Costello et al. 2015), subdivided into 3 main categories: (1) taxonomy related traits, e.g. paraphyletic groups, (2) biological and ecological traits-specific characteristics of a taxon, e.g. body size or feeding type and (3) human defined traits, e.g. the legal protection status of species, whether a species is introduced, harmful, or used as an ecological indicator. Initially, priority was given to the inclusion of traits that could be applied to the majority of marine taxa and where the information was easily available. The main driver for this approach was that the inclusion of these traits should result in new research, which in turn would drive improvements in the quality and quantity of trait information. Pilot projects were carried out for different species groups, allowing a thorough documentation of a selection of traits. In parallel, a standard vocabulary was put together (http://www.marinespecies.org/traits/wiki/), based on already existing resources to cover all marine life. All documented traits needed to be compliant with this vocabulary, in order to make the data as widely useable as possible, across groups. Defining a trait across all marine life is not trivial, as scientists can use terms in a different way between groups. This stresses the importance for users to realize these differences in terminology, before they analyse a trait across all taxa. Some traits were thought to be quite straightforward to document, although practice proved otherwise. Such a trait is body size, where the aim was to document the numerical value of the 'maximum body size in length'. In reality, a lot of variation is possible (e.g. for fish: fork length versus standard length) and maximum size is not always considered relevant from an ecological point of view. On the other hand, documenting numerical body size for each marine species is quite time consuming. Therefore, a complementary size trait will be documented, indicating whether taxa are considered as micro, meio, macro or mega. Whereas the initial approach was to complete the register for each tackled trait relevant for all marine species, we now complement this by (1) documenting several traits within a specific group, regardless whether this trait is also present in other taxon groups, and (2) documenting one specific trait, covering a variety – but not all – taxonomic groups, e.g. the composition of the skeleton for calcareous animals. Where possible, we aim to document a trait on a higher taxonomic level to allow the work to progress more rapidly. As the database allows top-down inheritance of traits, exceptions can easily be documented. In addition, collaborations are sought with already running initiatives such as Encyclopedia of Life. Very soon, all the documented traits will be searchable through the Marine Species Traits Portal. The human-defined traits are already accessible through the EMODnet Biology Portal (http://www.emodnet-biology.eu/toolbox), in combination with distribution information from the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS; www.eurobis.org; Vandepitte et al. 2011; Vandepitte et al. 2015) and taxonomy from WoRMS (www.marinespecies.org). Through the LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone (LW-TaxBB) (http://www.lifewatch.be/data-services/), services are offered to access these traits, combined with data and information from other resources such as WoRMS and (Eur)OBIS. We would like to acknowledge the EMODnet Biology and the LifeWatch project, in which the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) – host institute of WoRMS – is responsible for the development of the LW-TaxBB. Both projects provide funding for the documentation of trait data and development of services allowing researchers to easily access the available data, in combination with data from other sources.

Dispersal plays a key role to connect populations and, if limited, is one of the main processes to maintain and generate regional biodiversity. According to neutral theories of molecular evolution and biodiversity, dispersal limitation of propagules and population stochasticity are integral to shaping both genetic and community structure. We conducted a parallel analysis of biological connectivity at genetic and community levels in marine groups with different dispersal traits. We compiled large data sets of population genetic structure (98 benthic macroinvertebrate and 35 planktonic species) and biogeographic data (2193 benthic macroinvertebrate and 734 planktonic species). We estimated dispersal distances from population genetic data (i.e., FST vs. geographic distance) and from β-diversity at the community level. Dispersal distances ranked the biological groups in the same order at both genetic and community levels, as predicted by organism dispersal ability and seascape connectivity: macrozoobenthic species without dispersing larvae, followed by macrozoobenthic species with dispersing larvae and plankton (phyto- and zooplankton). This ranking order is associated with constraints to the movement of macrozoobenthos within the seabed compared with the pelagic habitat. We showed that dispersal limitation similarly determines the connectivity degree of communities and populations, supporting the predictions of neutral theories in marine biodiversity patterns., RADIALES (IEO)

This paper reviews the utility and availability of biological and ecological traits for marine species so as to prioritise the development of a world database on marine species traits. In addition, the ‘status’ of species for conservation, that is, whether they are introduced or invasive, of fishery or aquaculture interest, harmful, or used as an ecological indicator, were reviewed because these attributes are of particular interest to society. Whereas traits are an enduring characteristic of a species and/or population, a species status may vary geographically and over time. Criteria for selecting traits were that they could be applied to most taxa, were easily available, and their inclusion would result in new research and/or management applications. Numerical traits were favoured over categorical. Habitat was excluded as it can be derived from a selection of these traits. Ten traits were prioritized for inclusion in the most comprehensive open access database on marine species (World Register of Marine Species), namely taxonomic classification, environment, geography, depth, substratum, mobility, skeleton, diet, body size and reproduction. These traits and statuses are being added to the database and new use cases may further subdivide and expand upon them.

Since 2006, the ‘VLIZ Alien Species Consortium’ has collected data and information on species that were introduced by humans in marine and brackish habitats and have established reproducing populations in the study area. The consortium consists of a network of experts in marine and brackish environments in Belgium, representing more than 22 different institutions and supported by a secretariat hosted at Flanders Marine Institute VLIZ. Evidence on invasiveness is reported for 12 of the 73 alien species that are currently included in the checklist for the study area (October 2014). The network brings together scientific information from distributed sources in a central platform. It is a first step to developing an evidence-based approach to inform environmental policy objectives for Belgian marine waters and support effective measures to address invasive alien species in the study area. The information platform and species checklist are presented, approaches for collection and integration of information are described, and opportunities for collaboration between information systems at different governance levels are briefly discussed.

The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. The latter allows easy access to experts so they can update the content of the database in a timely fashion. Aphia is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and its more than 80 related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data. The content of Aphia can be consulted online, either by individual users or via machine-to-machine interactions. Aphia uses unique and stable identifiers for each available name in the database through the use of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs). The system not only allows the storage of accepted and unaccepted names, but it also documents the relationships between names. This makes it a very powerful tool for taxonomic quality control, and also allows the linking of different pieces of information through scientific names, both within the Aphia platform and in relation to externally hosted databases. Through these LSIDs, Aphia has become an important player in the field of (marine) biodiversity informatics, allowing interactions between its own taxonomic data and e.g., biogeographic databases. Some applications in the field of biodiversity informatics encompass the coupling of species traits and taxonomy, as well as the creation of diverse, expert validated data products that can be used by policy makers, for example. Aphia also supplies (part of) its content to other data integrators and the infrastructure can be used to host orphan databases in danger of being lost.

The European Ocean Biogeographic Information System—EurOBIS—is an integrated data system developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) for the EU Network of Excellence “Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning” (MarBEF) in 2004. Its principle aims are to centralise the largely scattered biogeographical data on marine species collected by European institutions and to make these quality-controlled data freely available and easily accessible. It is in essence a distributed system in which individual datasets go through a series of quality control procedures before they are integrated into one large consolidated database. EurOBIS is freely available online at www.eurobis.org, where marine biogeographical data—with a focus on taxonomy, temporal and spatial distribution—can be consulted and downloaded for analyses. Over the last 6 years, EurOBIS has collected 228 datasets contributed by more than 75 institutes, representing over 13.6 million distribution records of which almost 12.5 million records are species level identifications. It is now the largest online searchable public source of European marine biological data, holding biogeographical information on 26,801 species and 9,221 genera. EurOBIS acts as the European node of OBIS, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System of the Census of Marine Life (CoML). EurOBIS shares its data with OBIS, which in its turn shares its content with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). This article describes the status of the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System, identifies data gaps, possible applications, uses and limitations. It also formulates a strategy for the growth and improvement of the system and wants to appeal for more contributions.

The decrease of nematode size with water depth is well documented in the literature. However, many nematode size data sets originate from bathymetric gradients, with strong bias towards deep-water, muddy sediments. This has narrowed our perception of the environmental fac- tors that may influence nematode morphometry. Here we perform a morphometric analysis with data collected from a variety of sampling locations in the Indian Ocean and around Europe at a wider range of depths and sediment types. All nematode size descriptors decreased significantly with water depth, which explained more than 60% of total variation. This trend was most pronounced for mean nematode dry weight, which decreased by ~20% for every doubling in water depth. This coefficient of decrease was smaller than the described decline in food deposition with depth, as estimated from sediment community oxygen consumption rates (~35%), but on the same order of magnitude as the decrease in nematode density. Order of magnitude estimates based on these trends suggest that nematodes contribute about 7.5% to benthic metabolism over the depth range. In contrast to nema- tode dry weight, the decrease in nematode length and width with water depth was less steep. How- ever, nematode length was also affected by grain size, where shallow-water coarse sediments were inhabited by longer nematodes. Nematodes from the oligotrophic Aegean Sea were characterised by low length values and high width values, probably as an adaptation to sediments poor in organic mat- ter. These observations suggest that local factors can also be very important for shaping the morpho- metric landscape of the nematode communities.

From 25-28th November thematic editors of the Register of Antarctic Species and the Register of Antarctic Marine Species met in Ostend to discuss the application of trait data in the Aphia System in the context of the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic region. A mixture of terrestrial and marine expertise was represented from various countries around the world. Further experts provided input through remote participation. Participants received training in the use of the Lifewatch taxonomic backbone/WoRMS online editing tools and how to add and validate information. There were discussions on the prioritisation of traits, both in terms of those that should be added to the system as well as those that (thematic) editors should focus on adding. Eight priority data types were determined based on the need for information, the availability of data and, finally, how well these concepts were advanced within the taxonomic backbone. This includes information on habitat, mobility, holotype image and geographical information about type locality, feeding method/type and diet information, size, larval and juvenile development, data on invasive species and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem (VME) indicator taxa. While many similar priority variables were identified between marine and terrestrial ecology, there are considerable differences, especially in the terminology and vocabulary used. Given the complexity of the task, it was also recommended to engage with the community to extend the current pool of thematic editors for all realms and taxa.