Assessing the biodiversity data landscape of polar marine environments: implications and recommendations for enhancing data availability and quality
Polar marine environments are rich in biodiversity but challenging to study, resulting in limited and fragmented data. This research uses sponges as a model group to assess the state of online biodiversity data, revealing key gaps, duplication, and accessibility issues. It proposes a framework to improve database integration and highlights the need for better metadata in genetic datasets to support future monitoring and management of these vulnerable ecosystems.
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Description
Remote regions like polar marine environments are difficult places to conduct fieldwork, leading to significant data scarcity. Despite this, these regions support many unique organisms and communities, from the shallows to the deep, which are predicted to be highly impacted by environmental change and increasing human activity as sea ice diminishes. Understanding, monitoring, and managing these vulnerable ecosystems requires reliable, accessible online biodiversity data.
This thesis examines the current state of the online polar marine biodiversity data landscape, using sponges as a model group. It reveals a diverse and fragmented system with considerable data duplication and only partial centralisation. The research also shows that user effort to access biodiversity data has increased over time, and that UN-endorsed biodiversity databases hold partially biased spatiotemporal and taxonomic data for polar sponges.
An advisory framework for database integration is proposed, ranking key biodiversity database resources and recommending actions to improve access to a broader range of data sources. However, ongoing problems with poor metadata in genetic data make these resources difficult to access and reuse. As genetic data are an increasingly important biodiversity resource, the thesis also examines metadata loss and recovery strategies and proposes approaches to improve the accessibility and quality of both legacy and future genetic datasets.
About the Speaker
Rachel is a polar and deep-sea sponge taxonomist and biogeographer, who has from the beginnings of her 15-year career had a strong focus on how we can make marine biodiversity data more accessible for everyone. She has spent nearly a year of her life at sea, collaborating on international research expeditions which have sought to understand the biodiversity of underexplored marine benthic environments around the world. She champions the sponge as her symbol and gateway into conversations about the little known but incredible diversity of life on the seafloor.
Location
Eucalyptus Seminar Room, Robertson Building