Progress in biodiversity informatics

We celebrate recent achievements in biodiversity informatics.

 Enjoy exploring the new GBIF interface for the global mapping of occurrence records. Try zooming and using the time slider:  https://www.gbif.org/occurrence .   Congratulations to Donald Hobern and company.

The “TraitBank” of the Encyclopedia of Life now operates, developed with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  For example, insert “sharks” in the taxon box and click on “total life span” in the menu of traits, and you will receive a list of the life spans of 100+ sharks.  https://eol.org/data_search

 Tony Rees, one of the builders of the Ocean Biographical Information System, has created the wonderful Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera, especially notable for information on phyla, classes, orders, families, and genera: https://www.obis.org.au/irmng/index.html/document_view

 OBIS itself continues to grow and now has more than 37 million records on more than 120,000 species from more than 1300 data sets https://iobis.org/about/statisticsCongratulations to Ward Appeltans and company.

 PHE researchers Mark Stoeckle and Cameron Coffran developed software, TreeParser, that helps generate Klee diagram “heat maps” of genetic biodiversity (freely available on the PHE website https://phe.rockefeller.edu/barcode/klee.php ).  TreeParser uses data from GenBank and from the Barcode of Life public data portal (https://www.boldsystems.org/), , which now has over 1.7 m public records. Congratulations to Sujeevan Ratnasingam and Company.

 The progress in biodiversity informatics during the past decade is wonderful.  None of these things existed a decade ago.

 

2013 papers from the Census of Marine Life:

Numerous valuable papers continued to emerge from the Census of Marine Life during the past year. Here are some:

            Victor Gallardo’s paper on the huge  biomass of the filamentous bacteria off Chile & Peru: Extrapolations of Standing-Stocks of Big Bacteria in Humboldt Eastern Boundary Current Ecosystem

The late Prof. Liu’s paper on the biodiversity of China Seas: Status of Marine Biodiversity of the China Seas

The synthesis on European seas by Bhavani Narayanaswamy et al: Synthesis of Knowledge on Marine Biodiversity in European Seas: From Census to Sustainable Management

The MARECO paper by Monty Priede, Odd Aksel Bergstad and colleagues on the biological role of the Mid-Ocean Ridge: Does Presence of a Mid-Ocean Ridge Enhance Biomass and Biodiversity?

The paper by Boris Worm et al. on shark exploitation: Global catches, exploitation rates, and rebuilding … – Boris Worm

The PLoS Biology paper by Camilo Mora, Chih-Lin Wei and many others on: Biotic and Human Vulnerability to Projected Changes in Ocean Biogeochemistry over the 21st Century

The POST paper by Troy Nelson and Co. on sturgeon: Research Tools to Investigate Movements, Migrations, and Life History of Sturgeons (Acipenseridae), with an Emphasis on Marine-Oriented Populations

John Steele

John Steele, great marine ecologist and former director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, passed away on 5 November 2013. On 11 January 2014, WHOI celebrated his career, described at this website
https://hughsteele-public.sharepoint.com/

John and Jesse Ausubel co-authored the 1993 paper Flat Organizations for Earth Sciences.

John’s insights were crucial to the early definition of the Census of Marine Life research program.  Some of these were articulated in the National Research Council (Ocean Studies Board) report, Assessing the Global Distribution and Abundance of Marine Organisms, Workshop, Monterey, California, January 1998.

 

 

Diamonds and Deep Gas

In 1981, geologist John Saul wrote what may be a classic paper on diamonds and deep gas, which we now post to our site.  The full reference is: John M. Saul, The Origin of Diamonds and the Deep Gas Hypothesis, Proceedings of the XVIII International Gemmological Conference, Journal of the Gemmological Society of Japan, Vol.8, no1-4 (Dec. 1981) pp.79-85.
 

Breakout Essay

The current issue of GeneWatch includes an interesting array of reports on where DNA barcoding is and where it might go, including PHE-er Mark Stoeckle’s essay “DNA Barcoding Ready for Breakout“.

Sofia Kostyrko portrait

On 5 December 2013 the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach hosted Jesse to lecture on the Census of Marine Life. Artist Sofia Kostyrko also gave a tour of the marvelous collection of portraits of “oceanauts” that she has painted, including a portrait of Jesse, now on exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.