Perspectives on biodiversity informatics for ecology

Abstract

Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to ecology and biodiversity sciences. The premise is utilizing natural history collections/data, such as specimens and biodiversity observations, with information and communication technology. During the past two decades, biodiversity informatics has improved dramatically and has been applied increasingly in ecology science. In this paper, I review biodiversity informatics for ecology with a particular focus on the treatment of data. First, I discuss the traditional perspective of data collection and its usage in the ecological community. Then, I provide an overview of the trajectory of changing perspectives of data treatment relative to developing biodiversity informatics (i.e., the infiltration of the data reuse and sharing concepts). Specifically, I discuss the significance of data reuse, which offers numerous benefits for research, and data sharing with their supporting mechanisms and case studies. Finally, I discuss potential future developments in biodiversity informatics relative to the field of ecology.