IMIS

Gustav is interested in continuing to serve on the WoRMS Steering Committee, especially to facilitate the incorporation of images, distributions, and the capture of cryptic diversity. Serving on the SC has been an eye opening experience both about the power and potential of WoRMS. WoRMS’ highly successful operational model, based on a highly-engaged expert community and knowledgeable and responsive DMT, has excelled beyond most other biodiversity databases. Googling “WoRMS biodiversity” and “GBIF biodiversity” returned more hits on the former even though it is limited to marine taxa! The capture of nomenclature-associated information is rapidly moving forward, with many facets getting fairly comprehensive. Additional information, such as images, traits, and distributional data, however, is of limited availability. Increasing the coverage of such data types with the accuracy that WoRMS is known for, is the next big challenge. Images and distributional data are widely available for many species from other large sources, such as iDigBio, OBIS, GBIF, iNaturalist, but the challenge is to filter for accuracy without burdening editors to check myriads of records. Gustav would like to lead a working group on images to explore how to do this, starting with images (and later distributions) in iDigBio. iDigBio currently holds >22 million media, and >106 million occurrence records based on museum specimens, including the types of many species, providing great potential. Another challenge is to expand the database to cover taxa recognized as complexes where individual species are well-known by the community but whose nomenclature has not yet been revised. For example the common tropical urchin Echinometra mathaei is a complex of 4+ species, known through many publications as sp. A, B, C, D, etc. Expert capture of this finer scale taxonomic information will improve the coverage in WoRMS and allow more effective linkage with genetic databases such as the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD). BOLD now provides a rough first sort for each species into BINS of potential cryptic species. BOLD links are already embedded in WoRMS, but can lead to many BINS if the species name covers substantial cryptic diversity. He would like to continue to work with the SC, DMT, and editors to facilitate the expansion of WoRMS into these dimensions.