Avian Information: Looking into the Future

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Avian InformationLooking into the Future
Accipiter gularis

• A. Townsend Peterson
• University of Kansas

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The Vision
An integrated, multi-institutional,
cross-disciplinary information resource providing
state-of-the-art, up-to-the-minute information
about bird biology and bird diversity worldwide
that can address pressing questions in
Ornithology and in broader policy decisions
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Example 1

• Ornithological gazetteers developed in
  1960s-1980s for South America, Africa
• Summaries of specimen holdings developed for
  skeletons, eggs, and pickles
• No updates post-1990 task too big
• No summaries ever developed for skins, tissues,
  etc.
• you go to the field, capture a rare XXX, and no
  idea of what is the best preparation for XXX,
  given the needs of the ornithological community

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Example 2

• West Nile Virus arrives in 1999
• Ornithological community responds very positively
  in many ways new, focused studies that take
  advantage of ongoing work
• Ornithological community unable to produce
  simple, baseline information critical to WNV
  response e.g., connectivity between breeding
  and wintering populations
• WNV response designed in absence of detailed
  legacy data input from the ornithological
  community

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The Vision
An integrated, multi-institutional,
cross-disciplinary information resource providing
state-of-the-art, up-to-the-minute information
about bird biology and bird diversity worldwide
that can address pressing questions in
Ornithology and in broader policy decisions
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Napothera brevicauda
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The Challenges

• Sociology
• Diversity
• Immensity
• Multidisciplinarity

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Sociology

• Tradition of data hoarding
• I know that my data are valuable, so I will hold
  them close until that value is realized
• Value is never realized, at least in terms of
  
• Individuals or institutions hold back from
  participating in community-based data-sharing
  efforts
• Solution Change the psychology sharing data is
  good for the home institution, for the specimens,
  and for the community

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Diversity

• Ornithological information is diverse, including
• Data associated with specimens
• Observational information
• Data associated with recordings and photos
• Diverse data hold different sorts of information
• Need technology that is sufficiently flexible and
  adaptable
• Need further flexibility to cross-link to still
  more distinct universes of data (e.g., genomics,
  stable isotopes, geospatial data, etc.)

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Immensity

• gt5M ornithological specimens in North American
  biocollections alone
• Perhaps 100M observational data records
• Plus sound recordings and photo records
• All spread across many institutions
• First challenge serve textual data
• Second challenge serve full suite of data
  images, recordings, gene sequences, etc.

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Example Mexico
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Multidisciplinarity

• Ornithology is traditionally a branch of
  systematics, with roots in evolutionary biology
• The informatics challenge takes us into
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Molecular Biology
• Etc.
• Linking across these diverse field presents a
  variety of challenges

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Taxonomic data
Scientific literature
Gene sequence data
?
Recordings, images, videos
Stable isotope data
?
Primary Species Occurrence Data
?
Field notes, other ancillary information
Parasites etc.
?
Stomach contents, etc.
Geospatial data describing locality
Remote-sensing data showing locality in space
and time
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House Crow Global Geographic Potential
OCCURRENCE DATA CLIMATE DATA
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OCCURRENCE DATA MULTITEMPORAL RS DATA
Cyanocorax beecheii projected population loss
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AVM Scenarios
Hydrilla Egeria Myriophyllum
Coots
Eagles
Cyanobacterium (undescribed)
Characterization of ecological potential of
cyanobacterium is probably still incomplete, so
scenarios were built with and without it
BIRD DATA PLANT DATA CLIMATE DATA RS DATA
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Scenario Components
BIRD DATA PLANT DATA CLIMATE DATA RS DATA
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Scenario Results
Best case SE USA Worst case E USA Likely case
E USA, concentrated in SE
BIRD DATA PLANT DATA CLIMATE DATA RS DATA
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The Challenges

• Sociology
• Diversity
• Immensity
• Multidisciplinarity

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Sasia ochracea
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The Rewards

• Better data for Ornithology
• Flexible application to new questions
• New funding old and new
• Leadership in conservation planning
• New relevancy to key policy questions

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Example Avian Flu

• The coming plague
• May or may not cause mass human mortality, but
• Spreading rapidly SE Asia, now all of E Asia
• Will likely reach North America
• Will our ornithological community and data
  infrastructure be ready for the challenge?

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Birds and Biodiversity Informatics

• Enable our own science
• Demonstrate broad relevance conservation,
  public health, agriculture, etc.
• New funding
• New science

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Otus bakkamoena
Please visit, and contribute to, Biodiversity
Informatics http//jbi.nhm.ku.edu
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Thanks Very Much! town_at_ku.edu
Glaucidium brodei