Repatriation data: More than two million species occurrence records added to the Brazilian biodiversity information facility repository (SIBBR)

Abstract

Background Primary biodiversity data records, available on-line, are essential for conservation planning. Of the mega diversity countries, Brazil have reached a high level of scientific research in describing their biodiversity. However, there still remain significant limitations in recovering, collating and organizing available information on Brazil's biological diversity and its distribution. Since the colonial period, biological material were often collected and transferred to other countries, which were characterized, stored and maintained. As a result, natural history museums worldwide possess large amounts of primary biodiversity data originally from Brazil which are then published on-line in the international Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) infrastructure. Aiming to recover these data, the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBr) developed an automatic repatriation tool capable of retrieving all records registered in Brazil but published outside Brazilian territory in an automated manner. New information Thus, 2,459,366 records were added to SiBBr's Repository in one day. Europe and the United States hold about 80% of all records. The data set covers all life kingdoms. Animalia is the most represented group with 3 main phylum's: Chordata, Arthropoda and Mollusca, within more than 40% of all records. Plantae also comprises a large portion of the records with angiosperms having the major number of entries.