The LifeWatch taxonomic backbone: supporting the marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research community
Stefanie Dekeyzer, L. Vandepitte, S. Claus, Klaas Deneudt, Francisco Hernández · Platform voor marien onderzoek (Vlaams Instituut Voor De Zee) · 2014
To support and encourage scientific research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, Europe launched LifeWatch within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).LifeWatch functions as a central virtual laboratory, integrating observatories, databases, web services and modeling tools distributed throughout Europe.As part of the Flemish contributions to LifeWatch, the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is setting up a central taxonomic backbone (TB) to facilitate the standardization of species data and the integration of the distributed biodiversity facilities.The TB includes species information services (taxonomy access services, a taxonomic editing environment, species occurrence services and catalogue services) and integrates different component databases and data systems.Next to taxonomic information (taxonomic databases, species registers and nomenclatures), the TB will also include biogeographical data (species observations), ecological data (traits), genomic data and links to the available literature.An important contributing database to the LifeWatch TB is the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), which currently holds >222.000accepted species.Taxonomic information is supplemented with synonymy, vernacular names, species attributes, etc.Furthermore, there is a strong link between WoRMS and the (European) Ocean Biogeographic Information System ((Eur)OBIS) (currently >17.300.000distribution records of marine species).To further complement the marine species distribution data in EurOBIS, a close cooperation with the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) was established.To standardize geographic names between all data systems, Marine Regions, a standard list of marine georeferenced place names and areas (currently >32.000) is used.All these data systems are updated on a daily basis.As the TB is being constructed, more component databases and data systems will be integrated.In the near future the FADA database (Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment) will be incorporated into the TB.Furthermore the collaboration with FishBase and Catalogue of Life (CoL) is being intensified.LifeWatch is supporting all these communities with a central data management task force, which is providing technical, logistic and financial support for upgrading and expanding the component databases.The LifeWatch TB should be fully operational by 2016.This central TB will be a valuable asset to the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research community.Through the species information services, researchers can standardize and validate their own biodiversity data.These services, along with geographic and tidal services are available on the Flemish LifeWatch portal (http://www.lifewatch.be/data-services).