[Taxacom] Who uses biodiversity data and why? A few thoughts...

[Bob Mesibov]

Robert,

(1) You are quite correct that as the cost/ease of accessing data drops, 
then data quality problems loom larger. Now for a (hopefully) interesting 
choice: should we try to fix these (as best we can) in the Universal 
Distributed Dataset of All Biodiversity Information (UDDABI; I just love 
acronymns) at the global level by spending time and money developing magical 
algorithms, or should we just write "CAVEAT LECTOR!" on the GBIF banner and 
leave it to the end user to deal with those problems? The latter has always 
been standard operating procedure in taxonomy, long before GBIF. Should it 
be any different for other users of biodiversity data?

(2) I'm not sure "disagree" is the word you should have used, if your 
example concerns birds. Birds are a phenomenally special case. They comprise 
a small number of species regularly recorded over many years by a huge army 
of observers scattered over the entire planet, some of whom dedicate 
themselves to recording uncommon and geographically restricted species. For 
the other 95% of the animal kingdom, excluding perhaps butterflies, cowries 
and a few other iconic invertebrates, I stand by what I said.

(3) MAPA is an excellent tool, but like some other data "analysis" tools, 
all it does it help you decide where next to survey. This is valuable, of 
course, if field time and resources are limiting. Related tools go further, 
and by associating records with environmental variables, come up with 
predicted ranges, so you don't have to go into the field again at all! (The 
value of these predicted ranges has been much debated, and I don't want to 
open that can of worms here.) But neither MAPA nor the environmental 
enveloping tools are automated decision-makers for the kinds of issues that 
conservation planners deal with every day at the local level. I gave two 
examples of such issues in an earlier post. These issues are highly 
contingent on local conditions and their resolution is highly dependent on 
local knowledge.

What I've been arguing in this thread is that the UDDABI won't be especially 
useful at this level, and that it is at this local level that most of the 
world's conservation work happens, and needs to happen. Taxonomy has a very 
important role at this level, and is best played through local specialists, 
not through the unfiltered, uninterpreted output of a query to the UDDABI.
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Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195

Tasmanian Multipedes
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
Spatial data basics for Tasmania
http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/locations/index.html
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