European Register of Marine Species version 2.0

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European Register of Marine Species version 2.0
data management, current status and plans for the
future
Edward Vanden Berghe, Philippe Bouchet, Geoff
Boxshall, Mark Costello, Chris Emblow
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ERMS overview

• European Register of Marine Species
• Result of EU project, 10 partners
• Managed by SMEBD
• Will form taxonomic backbone of EurOBIS and
  MarBEF data management
• Will be updated

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ERMS v 1.0

• EU project (MAST)
• 2 years 1998-1999
• 19 contractual partners
• responsible for data management, promotion of the
  product, dialogue with end users
• 100 editors of taxonomic lists
• not necessarily from the partner institutions
• responsible for the content

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ERMS v 1.0 content

• List of names
• Synonymy for some groups
• Very limited distribution information
• level of major sea area (Atlantic,
  Mediterranean,)
• very incomplete

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ERMS geographic scope
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ERMS taxonomic scope

• Multicellular organisms
• Animals, plants, macroorganisms
• Protoctista not part of the original plan
• Gaps exist

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ERMS statistics

• all taxa species valid
• Biota 47319 32996 29862
• Animalia 38378 26540 24352
• Mollusca 4899 3343 3343
• Platyhelm. 3696 2427 2427
• Arthropoda 11221 8007 7436
• Fungi 597 332 331
• Plantae 19 6 6
• Protoctista 7737 5658 4713

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ERMS v 1.0 availability
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ERMS v 1.0 weaknesses

• Taxonomic gaps
• Set of excel sheets, no proper database
• Checklists, some created from scratch, some
  compilations of existing regional lists
• No hierarchy
• Detail available varies across checklists
• distribution info, synonymy, literature
• No integration between checklists
• Programme-based, no continuation

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SMEBD

• Society for the Management of European
  Biodiversity Data
• All data contributors are members of the society
• Society manages intellectual property right on
  behalf of authors
• ERMS authors, discussions to include also Fauna
  Europaea authors

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MarBEF

• Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning
• EU FP 6 Network of Excellence
• VLIZ does data management
• Needed taxonomic authority list for integration
  of databases
• EurOBIS
• SMEBD gave mandate to VLIZ/MarBEF to manage data

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ERMS v 1.1

• Integrating spreadsheets in one relational
  database
• MS SQL Server, front end Access
• Structure is open hierarchy ( ITIS)
• Content remains same as ERMS 1.0
• some inconsistencies removed
• But adding taxonomic hierarchy

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ERMS v 1.1 structure
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ERMS v 1.1 availability
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ERMS v 2.0

• Content will be updated
• through web interface
• snapshot frozen and archived at regular intervals
• Structure revised to allow audit trail
• who did what, when
• Taxon editors have been invited
• Extra information (not strictly ERMS)
• Feeding types, distribution info (country),
  trophic level, biomass

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ERMS v 2.0 editorial structure

• ERMS Editorial committee
• Arvanitides, Bouchet, Boxshall, Costello (chair),
  Emblow, Vanden Berghe (db)
• responsible for management
• Associate editors (Group coordinators of FE)
• responsible for part of taxonomic tree
• have edit rights through web site
• Review editors (Validation of FE)
• assist associate editors

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ERMS v 2.0 db structure
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ERMS future

• Species 2000 Europa member
• EuroHub for Species 2000, together with Fauna
  Europaea and EuroMed PlantBase
• Through dynamic link
• distributed system
• Spice protocol developed under Species 2000
  Europa
• possible alternatives are DiGIR and BioCASe
• Contribution to global systems
• ITIS
• URMO