Research Spotlight

Data Curation Profiles—An Information Science framework for data managers

-- Contributed by Wade Bishop and Kelly White, The University of Tennessee, School of Information Sciences

Data curation profiles (DCPs). DCPs give scientists, researchers, and data managers an enhanced and detailed understanding of the “data story” from the perspective of the data. A DCP “captures requirements for specific data generated by researchers articulated by the researchers themselves” (http://datacurationprofiles.org/purpose) and provides data managers a framework to acquire an in-depth understanding of the particular data curation needs of producers and their intended users. Read more about Wade & Kelly's work with the iDigBio community here.

Publishing a new species?  Add the unique identifiers!

Citation of voucher specimen data can be problematic.  There are currently no formulated rules for how to cite a digital specimen in a publication, but data aggregators such iDigBio, GBIF, and VertNet offer suggestions. Pensoft is leading the way by providing efficient methods for publishing digital data (see their blog post here) - but it still rarely happens, or occurs in a non-systematic way.  Recently, with my colleague Dr George Argent, a new species of Rhododendron from Mount Yule, Papua New Guinea was published in the February 2017 online volume of the Edinburgh Journal of Botany. The digital data for the isotype housed at the Bishop Museum is available through iDigBio and we wanted to cite this information in the published paper.  As a test case, we added the Darwin Core occurrenceID and a link to the iDigBio record page. Read more here.

Allocating more memory to OpenRefine - and other helpful information for handling large datasets

-- Contributed by Chris Evelyn, University of California - Santa Barbara, along with Deborah Paul and Shelley James, iDigBio

This month's Research Spotlight contribution resulted from a recent iDigBio workshop where participants learned the basics of OpenRefine. Finding a limitation to the size of the dataset that could be manipulated, Chris found the following solution to working with large datasets from iDigBio and other biodiversity data aggregators.  OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) is a powerful tool for helping with the cleaning of messy data - ideal for natural history collection managers, data managers, and researchers using biodiversity data alike.  Read more here.

Bees, bees and more bees - or are there? Monitoring the status of US bee populations using biological collections.

-- Contributed by Jillian Goodwin, iDigBio, interviewing Sam Droege, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Sam Droege heads the USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab based at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Maryland, and is working with other researchers to assess the status of bees nationwide.

Preserving historic bee specimens to protect future bee biodiversity

-- Contributed by Joan Meiners, PhD Student, Ernest Lab, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida

For my PhD research in Dr. Morgan Ernest's lab at the University of Florida, I am using large datasets of occurrence records of native bees and their habitat associations to try to understand native bee biodiversity and foraging patterns...read more here.

Playing with biological specimen data in iDigBio – limitations and solutions for research

-- Contributed by Shelley A James

Puerto Rico – warm Caribbean seas, high biodiversity, and coqui frogs.  iDigBio was invited to NatureServe’s Biodiversity without Boundaries 2016 meeting in April 2016 to share ideas and resources with members of the conservation community....read more here.

Using herbarium specimen data to understand native mint distribution, evolution, and ecology

-- Contributed by Andre Naranjo

I am a graduate student at the University of Florida, and a member of the Soltis Lab, working on a genus of scrub mints found only in the southeastern United States....read more here.