On natural history collections, digitized and not: a response to Ferro and Flick

Sikes, Derek S.; Copas, Kyle; Hirsch, Tim; Longino, John T.; Schigel, Dmitry

doi:10.3897/zookeys.618.9986

Cited by 22 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In our view and considering the presence of nearly 7 million North American occurrences in SCAN currently (see Introduction), this suggests that any author, aspiring to generate a comprehensive and reliable checklist of North American insects, is well advised to explore and selectively include aggregated, occurrence data to their product. At a minimum, we would expect an explanation why such data were discarded, following their exploration (see also Ferro and Flick 2015, Sikes et al 2016). …”

Section: Discussion - New Opportunities For Authoring Checklistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The new data sources can also introduce new uncertainties and errors, particularly regarding the consistency of taxonomic name usages (Mesibov 2013, Ferro and Flick 2015, Franz et al 2016, Mesibov 2018). Nevertheless, occurrence-based studies should strive to make high-quality, standard-compliant biodiversity data openly available (Sikes et al 2016). …”

Section: Checklist Generation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Best practices of how to generate species checklists are evolving, because investments into the on-line aggregation of occurrence data (Wieczorek et al 2012, Page et al 2015) are generating new circumstances for creating regional biodiversity checklists (Ferro and Flick 2015, Sikes et al 2016, GBIF 2017). For instance, at the time of preparing this article (March, 2018), the "Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network" portal (SCAN; Gries et al 2014, Seltmann et al 2017) returned nearly 6.65 million occurrence records for the query "Hexapoda, USA".…”

Section: Introduction - the Branching Out Of Checklist Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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An updated checklist of the Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 of the Algodones Dunes of California, with comments on checklist data practices

Johnston

Aalbu²,

Franz

2018

BDJ

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Generating regional checklists for insects is frequently based on combining data sources ranging from literature and expert assertions that merely imply the existence of an occurrence to aggregated, standard-compliant data of uniquely identified specimens. The increasing diversity of data sources also means that checklist authors are faced with new responsibilities, effectively acting as filterers to select and utilize an expert-validated subset of all available data. Authors are also faced with the technical obstacle to bring more occurrences into Darwin Core-based data aggregation, even if the corresponding specimens belong to external institutions. We illustrate these issues based on a partial update of the Kimsey et al. 2017 checklist of darkling beetles - Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 - inhabiting the Algodones Dunes of California. Our update entails 54 species-level concepts for this group and region, of which 31 concepts were found to be represented in three specimen-data aggregator portals, based on our interpretations of the aggregators' data. We reassess the distributions and biogeographic affinities of these species, focusing on taxa that are precinctive (highly geographically restricted) to the Lower Colorado River Valley in the context of recent dune formation from the Colorado River. Throughout, we apply taxonomic concept labels (taxonomic name according to source) to contextualize preferred name usages, but also show that the identification data of aggregated occurrences are very rarely well-contextualized or annotated. Doing so is a pre-requisite for publishing open, dynamic checklist versions that finely accredit incremental expert efforts spent to improve the quality of checklists and aggregated occurrence data.

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Section: Discussion - New Opportunities For Authoring Checklistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Checklist Generation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction - the Branching Out Of Checklist Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An updated checklist of the Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 of the Algodones Dunes of California, with comments on checklist data practices

Johnston

Aalbu²,

Franz

2018

BDJ

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“…A first step is to recognize that trust is not just a feature of data signal quality but also a consequence of the social design of aggregation and the resulting power balance between data contributors and aggregators. This insight should not count as a justification for contributors to withhold occurrence records (26,33). However, declining to trust an out-of-balance social design does make sense in light of well-established thinking about cooperative knowledge systems (48-51, 55, 57).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

To increase trust, change the social design behind aggregated biodiversity data

Franz

Sterner

2017

Preprint

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Growing concerns about the quality of aggregated biodiversity data are lowering trust in largescale data networks. Aggregators frequently respond to quality concerns by recommending that biologists work with original data providers to correct errors "at the source". We show that this strategy falls systematically short of a full diagnosis of the underlying causes of distrust. In particular, trust in an aggregator is not just a feature of the data signal quality provided by the sources to the aggregator, but also a consequence of the social design of the aggregation process and the resulting power balance between individual data contributors and aggregators. The latter have created an accountability gap by downplaying the authorship and significance of the taxonomic hierarchies -frequently called "backbones" -they generate, and which are in effect novel classification theories that operate at the core of data-structuring process. The Darwin Core standard for sharing occurrence records plays an under-appreciated role in maintaining the accountability gap, because this standard lacks the syntactic structure needed to preserve the taxonomic coherence of data packages submitted for aggregation, potentially leading to inferences that no individual source would support. Since high-quality data packages can mirror competing and conflicting classifications, i.e., unsettled systematic research, this plurality must be accommodated in the design of biodiversity data integration. Looking forward, a key directive is to develop new technical pathways and social incentives for experts to contribute directly to the validation of taxonomically coherent data packages as part of a greater, trustworthy aggregation process.

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“…To this end, we support the mission of GBIF and iDigBio by providing our data in Darwin Core Archive format from the INHS portal and through an archived data set (DeWalt et al 2016b). We agree that building resources through these data aggregators is an important endeavor (Sikes et al 2016). Data from global aggregators should be heavily scrutinized for metadata such as who identified the material, when it was identified, and what life stages were available to support a given determination.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Atlas of Ohio Aquatic Insects: Volume II, Plecoptera

DeWalt¹,

Grubbs²,

Armitage³

et al. 2016

BDJ

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BackgroundWe provide volume II of a distributional atlas of aquatic insects for the eastern USA state of Ohio. This treatment of stoneflies (Plecoptera) is companion to Armitage et al. (2011) on caddisflies (Trichoptera). We build on a recent analysis of Ohio stonefly diversity patterns based on large drainages (DeWalt et al. 2012), but add 3717 new records to the data set. We base most analyses on the United States Geological Survey Hierarchical Unit Code eight (HUC8) drainage scale. In addition to distributional maps for each species, we provide analyses of species richness versus HUC8 drainage area and the number of unique locations in a HUC8 drainage, species richness versus Ohio counties, analyze adult presence phenology throughout the year, and demonstrate stream size range affiliation for each species.New informationThis work is based on a total of 7797 specimen records gathered from 21 regional museums, agency data, personal collections, and from the literature Table 1. To our knowledge this is the largest stonefly data set available for a similarly sized geopolitical area anywhere in the world. These data are made available as a Darwin Core Archive supported by the Pensoft Integrated Publishing Toolkit (DeWalt et al. 2016b). All known published papers reporting stoneflies from Ohio are detailed in Suppl. material 1. We recovered 102 species from Ohio, including all nine Nearctic families Table 2. Two species were removed from the DeWalt et al. (2012) list and two new state records added. Perlidae (32 spp.) was most speciose, compared to the low diversity Pteronarcyidae (2 spp.) and Peltoperlidae (1 sp.). The richest HUC8 drainages occurred in northeastern, south-central, and southern regions of the state where drainages were heavily forested, had the highest slopes, and were contained within or adjacent to the unglaciated Allegheny and Appalachian Plateaus. Species poor drainages occurred mainly in the northwestern region where Wisconsinan aged lake plains climaxed to an expansive wooded wetland, the Black Swamp. The unglaciated Lower Scioto drainage (72 spp.) in south-central Ohio supported the greatest species richness. There was no relationship between species richness and HUC8 drainage size, but the number of unique locations in a drainage strongly related to species richness. All Ohio counties were represented in the data set with Hocking County (59 spp.) of the Lower Scioto drainage being the richest and most heavily sampled. Adult presence phenology was influenced by phylogenetic relationships such that the superfamily Nemouroidea (Capniidae, Leuctridae, Nemouridae, and Taeniopterygidae) generally emerged in winter and spring while the superfamilies Pteronarcyoidea (Pteronarcyidae, Peltoperlidae) and Perloidea (Chloroperlidae, Perlidae, Perlodidae) emerged later, some species continuing emergence through summer months. Species often occupied specific stream size ranges, while others were generalists. Two species once histrorically abundant in the western Lake Erie Bass Islands no longer reside th...

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On natural history collections, digitized and not: a response to Ferro and Flick

Cited by 22 publications

References 32 publications

An updated checklist of the Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 of the Algodones Dunes of California, with comments on checklist data practices

An updated checklist of the Tenebrionidae sec. Bousquet et al. 2018 of the Algodones Dunes of California, with comments on checklist data practices

To increase trust, change the social design behind aggregated biodiversity data

Atlas of Ohio Aquatic Insects: Volume II, Plecoptera

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