Ocean Biogeographic Information System: exploring its content

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Ocean Biogeographic Information Systemexploring
its content

• Edward Vanden Berghe
• Mark Costello
• Phoebe Zhang
• Fred Grassle

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Mission

• OBIS publishes primary data on marine species
  locations online through www.iobis.org
• It facilitates data discovery and exploration by
• Searching by species, higher taxa, time,
  location, depth, database
• Mapping, overlaying species distributions on
  ocean environment, modelling of potential
  environmental range
• Integrates data
• over different marine themes
• Microbes to whales
• Genetics and morphology
• Poles to equator
• Over many data providers
• Enables data capture for re-use
• Support CoML 2010 synthesis

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Taxonomic register

• Aphia is general species register maintained at
  VLIZ
• Consists of several overlapping subsets
• defined geographical (ERMS, NWARMS)
• defined taxonomic (Porifera, Platyhelminthes)
• defined thematic (HABs, invasive species)
• Exposed through www.marinespecies.org
• WoRMS Aphia external GSDs
• Algaebase, Hexacorallia, FishBase

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WoRMS plans

• 100,000 valid species end 2007
• 200,000 valid species end 2008
• 85-90 of known species
• Distribution records for all of these by 2010
• Many species only known from holotype!!
• Gap analysis

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OBIS number of records

• 238 datasets
• In cache
• 13.6 million records, 147,000 names
• In index
• 6.9 million records at genus level and below,
  80,000 species
• Among the largest providers to GBIF

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Location of RONs
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Map of CoML field projects
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Data providers to OBIS

• 7 Million from RONs
• 700,000 from all CoML combined
• Deadline for 2010 synthesis

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Historical data
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Limitations of OBIS and OBIS data

• We dont know the total biodiversity
• New species are discovered
• Selective sampling in geography
• Mostly in surface waters
• Temperate zones
• Selective sampling in taxonomy
• Mostly big things, vertebrates

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New species are discovered
Data from http//marinespecies.org
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Taxonomic bias

• Taxon species in OBIS
• Cetaceans 133 117 88
• Seals 45 36 80
• Fish 24139 21258 88
• Decapods 8227 3796 46
• Echinoderms 6199 1624 26
• Bryozoans 6000 1096 18

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Geographical bias
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Bias in depth deeper than 2500m
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Analysis of OBIS data

• First attempts at diversity pattern on a global
  scale, with a large number of taxa
• Previously either local or on one taxon (e.g.
  commercial large fish like tuna, forams)
• Safety in numbers
• Results not affected by idiosynchrasies of single
  taxon or study
• Results very preliminary, and need data cleaning
  and further checking
• E.g. by artificially removing datasets from
  analysis

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Global pattern of sampling effort
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Pattern in number of species
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Corrected for bias ES(50)
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Large Marine Ecosystems
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Current activities

• Adding data
• Together with new and existing RONs
• Metadata inventories
• From CoML projects
• 2010 deadline!
• Completing the inventory of known marine species
  WoRMS
• Prioritise on having at least one distribution
  record per species, preferably the type locality
• Quality control
• Cleaning and harmonising taxonomy
• Outlier detection
• Analysis
• Open for business