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Un paseo vertiginoso y pausado, a dos siglos y medio de historia del Jardín, de Botánica y de Ciencia

Plinian Core (PliC) is a set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe different aspects of biological species information. Under "biological species information" all kinds of properties or traits related to taxa—biological and non-biological—are included. Thus, for instance, terms pertaining to descriptions, legal aspects, conservation, management, demographics, nomenclature, or related resources are incorporated. Plinian Core started as a collaborative project between Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio, Costa Rica) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility Spain (GBIF Spain) in 2005. In successive years, the National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO, Mexico), the National Network of Open Biodiversity Data (SiB Colombia)/the Humboldt Institute (Colombia), the University of Granada (Spain) and the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil) were also involved. In 2012. PliC aligned with the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and an umbrella Interest Group was created (Species Information IG, Pando 2017b) with developments carried out by its corresponding TDWG Task Group (Plinian Core Task Group 2020b). PliC design requirements include: ease of use, being self-contained, able to support data integration from multiple databases, and ability to handle different levels of granularity. Since its early stages, PliC was formalized as an XML Schema. Its terms can be grouped in its current version as follows: Metadata Base elements Record metadata Nomenclature and classification Taxonomic description Natural history Invasive species Habitat and distribution Demography and threats Uses, management and conservation Miscellaneous: associated party, measurement or fact, references and ancillary data Metadata Base elements Record metadata Nomenclature and classification Taxonomic description Natural history Invasive species Habitat and distribution Demography and threats Uses, management and conservation Miscellaneous: associated party, measurement or fact, references and ancillary data During its years of existence, PliC has been implemented in several real-life contexts (e.g., Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge 2020, CRBIO 2020, SIB Colombia 2020), and a set of extensions for using PliC in GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) was developed (Plinian Core Task Group 2020a). PliC has been featured in some TDWG conferences, either to explore and explain how it relates to other TDWG standards (Pando 2018), how PliC handles specific information aspects (Pando 2017a), or how it may be used in biodiversity portals (Vargas et al. 2018, Vargas et al. 2019). Recent work has focused on how to represent terms and codify structure as an XML Schema (XSD) under the current TDWG Documentation Standard (SDS, Vocabulary Maintenance Specification Task Group 2017). Challenges identified in the process comprise: how to handle terms used in different contexts, how to preserve the semantic context of terms reflected in the XSD hierarchy in the SDS flat layout, and how to refer to terms and definitions defined in other data specifications. These are the areas to focus our contribution.

Biodiversity informatics is a new and evolving field, requiring efforts to develop capacity and a curriculum for this field of science. The main objective was to summarise the level of activity and the efforts towards developing biodiversity informatics curricula, for work-based training and/or academic teaching at universities, taking place within the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) countries and its associated network. A survey approach was used to identify existing capacities and resources within the network. Most of GBIF Nodes survey respondents (80%) are engaged in onsite training activities, with a focus on work-based professionals, mostly researchers, policy-makers and students. Training topics include data mobilisation, digitisation, management, publishing, analysis and use, to enable the accessibility of analogue and digital biological data that currently reside as scattered datasets. An initial assessment of academic teaching activities highlighted that countries in most regions, to varying degrees, were already engaged in the conceptualisation, development and/or implementation of formal academic programmes in biodiversity informatics, including programmes in Benin, Colombia, Costa Rica, Finland, France, India, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan and Togo. Digital e-learning platforms were an important tool to help build capacity in many countries. In terms of the potential in the Nodes network, 60% expressed willingness to be recruited or commissioned for capacity enhancement purposes. Contributions and activities of various country nodes across the network have been highlighted and a working curriculum framework has been defined.

Citizen science projects seem to have a high potential to provide systematized, high-quality biodiversity observations for science and other purposes. iNaturalist offers users purposeful participation by creating projects that allow observations to be grouped with a taxonomic and geographic focus, as well as on a given time scale. Between 2014 and December 2021, 720 iNaturalist projects have been created for Spain, most of them after the establishment of Natusfera—the Spanish branch of the iNaturalist global Community—in 2020. In this paper, we analyze how iNaturalist projects are created; how they perform in terms of engagement, data contribution, and impact; and assess the degree and possible causes of their success. A database with project descriptors and indicators was created for this purpose. We discovered that a high percentage of the projects (more than 25%) perform far short of expectations, and that bioblitzes are in general very successful in terms of creation, dissemination, and participation. Finally, we present some recommendations aiming to make these projects more effective., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación