Biodiversity Informatics, 8, 2012, pp.1-11. 1 A NEW ERA FOR SPECIMEN DATABASES AND BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA WILLEM COETZER, OFER GON South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Somerset Street, Grahamstown, South Africa. Email for correspondence: w.coetzer@saiab.ac.za. MICHELLE HAMER South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cussonia Ave, Pretoria, South Africa FATIMA PARKER-ALLIE South African National Biodiversity Institute, Rhodes Drive, Cape Town, South Africa Abstract. ‒ We present observations and a commentary on the inherited legacy and current state of biodiversity information management in South African natural history museums, and make recommendations for the future. We emphasize the importance of using a recognized database application, and training and capacity development to improve the quality and integration of biodiversity information for research. In the last decade, biodiversity information in specimen databases of natural history museums has seen renewed interest and much innovation and development (Bisby 2000, Soberón and Peterson 2004, Johnson 2007, Peterson et al. 2010). Biodiversity Informatics has been defined as ‘application of informatics to recorded and yet- to-be discovered information specifically about biodiversity, and the linking of this information with genomic, geospatial and other biological and non-biological datasets.’ The mission of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF1) is to ‘facilitate free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide via the Internet to underpin sustainable development.’ As of January 2012 the GBIF data portal provided access to 317 million primary biodiversity data records. By January 2011 ~7.1 million records on the GBIF data portal were contributed by the South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF), to which natural history museums in South Africa contribute their biodiversity information. These records originated from 8 South African data providers (mostly natural history museums) and 14 collections. Eighty per cent of the records were unvouchered occurrences, mostly observation records from the South African Bird Atlas Project, contributed by the Animal Demography Unit of the University of Cape Town. In January 2011 the digital records of 1http://www.gbif.org/. approximately 26% (Hamer 2011) of vouchered specimens in South African zoological collections could be queried through the SABIF Data Portal or the GBIF Data Portal. The vast majority of information about South African biodiversity, which is relatively well sampled (Figure 1), originates from South African natural history museums and the South African Bird Atlas Project (Table 1). Biodiversity information, including specimen records from natural history collections, is used in: • Biodiversity monitoring (e.g., Reyers and McGeoch 2007) • Bioregional planning (e.g., Smith and Wolfson 2004) • Identifying and categorizing threatened species (e.g., Tweddle et al. 2009) • Understanding the impacts of global change on biodiversity (e.g., Skelton and Coetzer 2011, Cherry 2009, Skelton et al. 1995) and developing mitigation strategies • Informing sustainable harvesting programs • Control of alien, invasive species (e.g., Foxcroft et al. 2009) and disease vectors • Environmental impact assessments. Ecological niche modeling (Phillips et al. 2006) is a productive research area that relies heavily on high-quality biodiversity data, especially with respect to taxonomic precision and precision of georeferencing. Maintaining such

Biodiversity Informatics, 8, 2012, pp.1-11. 2 high-quality data requires a well-designed and well-managed relational database and application, tailor-made for biodiversity information. Perhaps the most practical use of biodiversity information is in systematic conservation planning, to identify areas that need to be protected for the persistence and spatial continuity of genetic variability (populations), species, communities or ecological services (Nel et al. 2011). The biodiversity community has recently drawn extensively on biodiversity information held by South Africa’s natural history museums for important, national biodiversity projects. Examples of these are the Alien Zonation Project (NEM:BA, 2004), the National Freshwater Protected Areas Project (Nel et al. 2011) and the National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment (Reyers et al. 2007). Figure 1. The density of occurrences of South African biodiversity as published by GBIF in April 2012. Table 1. Numbers of specimen occurrences of South African biodiversity contributed to GBIF as of April 2012. Numbers in parentheses refer to vouchered specimens. Country Georeferenced occurrences Georeferenced as % of total Not georeferenced Argentina 14 0.05 0 Australia 3,676 0.05 2,395 Austria 775 0.05 4,352 Belgium 4,003 0.05 3,406 Canada 1,501 0.05 1,019 Colombia 15 0.05 0 Denmark 1,284 0.05 319 Estonia 6 0.05 139 Finland 733 0.05 1,179 France 612 0.05 24,754 Germany 35,604 0.05 21,403 Hong Kong 2 0.05 0 India 236 0.05 0 Japan 6 0.05 1,556 Mexico 56 0.05 176 Netherlands 2,056 0.05 6,201 New Zealand 0 0.05 105 Norway 376 0.05 0 Poland 529 0.05 764 Portugal 0 0.05 38 South Africa 7,115,071 (2,295,813) 98.3 (94.8) 638,843 Spain 132 0.05 531 Sweden 1,643 0.05 36,594 Switzerland 2 0.05 16,014 Taiwan 1 0.05 0 United Kingdom 2,166 0.05 37,773 United States 69,496 1 71,476 TOTAL 7,239,995 (2,420,737) - 869,037 As the ultimate, verifiable source of much biodiversity information, natural history museums are now not only responsible for the curation, preservation and management of collections of physical specimens, but also for capturing, managing and disseminating accurate, precise,