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      A global perspective on decadal challenges and priorities in biodiversity informatics

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          Abstract

          Biodiversity informatics is a field that is growing rapidly in data infrastructure, tools, and participation by researchers worldwide from diverse disciplines and with diverse, innovative approaches. A recent ‘decadal view’ of the field laid out a vision that was nonetheless restricted and constrained by its European focus. Our alternative decadal view is global, i.e., it sees the worldwide scope and importance of biodiversity informatics as addressing five major, global goals: (1) mobilize existing knowledge; (2) share this knowledge and the experience of its myriad deployments globally; (3) avoid ‘siloing’ and reinventing the tools of knowledge deployment; (4) tackle biodiversity informatics challenges at appropriate scales; and (5) seek solutions to difficult challenges that are strategic.

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          New developments in museum-based informatics and applications in biodiversity analysis.

          Information from natural history collections (NHCs) about the diversity, taxonomy and historical distributions of species worldwide is becoming increasingly available over the Internet. In light of this relatively new and rapidly increasing resource, we critically review its utility and limitations for addressing a diverse array of applications. When integrated with spatial environmental data, NHC data can be used to study a broad range of topics, from aspects of ecological and evolutionary theory, to applications in conservation, agriculture and human health. There are challenges inherent to using NHC data, such as taxonomic inaccuracies and biases in the spatial coverage of data, which require consideration. Promising research frontiers include the integration of NHC data with information from comparative genomics and phylogenetics, and stronger connections between the environmental analysis of NHC data and experimental and field-based tests of hypotheses.
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            Multiple dimensions of climate change and their implications for biodiversity.

            The 21st century is projected to witness unprecedented climatic changes, with greater warming often reported for high latitudes. Yet, climate change can be measured in a variety of ways, reflecting distinct dimensions of change with unequal spatial patterns across the world. Polar climates are projected to not only warm, but also to shrink in area. By contrast, today's hot and arid climates are expected to expand worldwide and to reach climate states with no current analog. Although rarely appreciated in combination, these multiple dimensions of change convey complementary information. We review existing climate change metrics and discuss how they relate to threats and opportunities for biodiversity. Interpreting climate change metrics is particularly useful for unknown or poorly described species, which represent most of Earth's biodiversity.
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              Spatial bias in the GBIF database and its effect on modeling species' geographic distributions

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                town@ku.edu
                jsoberon@ku.edu
                krishtalka@ku.edu
                Journal
                BMC Ecol
                BMC Ecol
                BMC Ecology
                BioMed Central (London )
                1472-6785
                29 May 2015
                29 May 2015
                2015
                : 15
                : 15
                Affiliations
                Biodiversity Institute, University of Kansas, 1345 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045 USA
                Article
                46
                10.1186/s12898-015-0046-8
                4467596
                26022532
                cbee7209-9a20-48c5-aadf-8f0ede9ffd8b
                © Peterson et al. 2015

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 9 September 2014
                : 24 April 2015
                Categories
                Correspondence
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2015

                Ecology
                biodiversity informatics,data,infrastructure,training,capacity-building
                Ecology
                biodiversity informatics, data, infrastructure, training, capacity-building

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