Coreoidea Species File Online

Laurence Livermore5th IHS Quadrennial Meeting – July 2014

Lessons Learned in Creating a Comprehensive Taxonomic Inventory

Why create CSFO?

• No complete Coreidae catalogue for over 100 years

• Little modern data on African or Asian taxa

• Prior to project almost no data online• Extensive taxonomic card catalogue

available (William Dolling)

Lethierry & Severin (1894)http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15707871

What is CSFO?

• Comprehensive online catalogue• Uses Species File Software platform• Contains highly structured taxonomic data• Most content open access for people and machines

http://creativecommons.org/http://software.speciesfile.org/ http://wwx.inhs.illinois.edu/

Why choose Species File?

• All work should be done in an online catalogue• Three options in 2007/2008:

1. Bespoke solution

2. Scratchpads

3. Species File Software

• Species File had more suitable features and guaranteed support

What has been achieved so far? (July 2014)

• 5393 Names (3085 valid species – 2555 valid Coreidae species) • 6232 Specimens* (2199 unique taxa)• 2310 Images (742 unique taxa)• 22865 Citations (2265 unique references)

~3000+ specimen images from 20+ collections to be verified and databased!

http://coreoidea.speciesfile.org/Common/search/ShowStats.aspx

What can CSFO do?

Taxon Image Comparison

Maps

Search

• Ecological relationships

• Expert assignation

• Faunal lists

• Localities

• People

• Specimens

• Specimen depositories

• Statistics

• Taxa

Other Features

• Keys• Machine services• Tests & verification checks (50+)

Public Engagement & (Re)Usage

How many of you have used data from a generic online service/resource at work?

Does anyone use Coreoidea Species File?

Since the last IHS Meeting (2010):• ~30,000 sessions• 13,700 unique users• 528,000 page views• Average session duration = 8:51 minutes

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Who uses Coreoidea Species File (2010-2014)?

Usage by biodiversity aggregators

Lessons Learned

What worked well?

• Working digitally in a highly structured database (with validation)• Having robust statistics (assessing progress/access)• Recording data quality• Simple & standardised imaging procedure• Good literature access

What would I do differently?

• Additional planning and add overheads• Decide initial scope of data and stick to it! (very tempting to expand)• Agree and document procedures for consistency• Discuss licensing, custodianship and post-project sustainability• Get more collaborators, be more open

The Future

What is the future of CSFO?

• Continues to get updates on new taxa/papers (online only)• (Type) specimen images still being added (slow process)• No long-term (5+ years) planning• Hosting platform has long-term support (10+ years) with eventual migration

to Taxon Works (SF successor)• Collaborators and contributors welcome!

As a community what should we be thinking about?

• The future is digital and a lack of authoritative and comprehensive lists of names hampers scientific progress – we need to do more

• Sustainability/ maintenance is still a big concern• Further discussion on authorship and attribution – will CC0 work for us?

BUT

• Digitisation of collections will make similar projects easier• New technologies to assist digital work: crowdsourcing data and citizen

science

Acknowledgements

Original CSFO Team: Bill Dolling, Valérie Lemaître and Mick Webb

CSFO Collaborators & Contributors: Tristan Bantock, Harry Brailovsky, Paul Brock, Holly Dawson, Elizabeth Livermore, Gerardo Mazzetta, Malin Nikunlassi, Rich Packauskas

Financial Support: The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust under a Research Project Grant. Additional support was provided by: the SYNTHESYS Project http://www.synthesys.info/ to visit NHMW (AT-TAF) and HNHM (HU-TAF) which is financed by European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP6 "Structuring the European Research Area" Programme; the Zoological Museum – University of Copenhagen to curate and examine the J.C. Fabricius type collection.

All the curators, researchers and collection managers who hosted and assisted me!

The International Heteropterists’ Society for enabling me to attend this meeting!

http://coreoidea.speciesfile.org/