Brazil is one of the world's most biodiverse countries with 49,993 plants and 119,640 animal species catalogued (Brazilian Flora 2020 and Taxonomic Catalog of the Brazilian Fauna). As a consequence, a greater rate of animal records would be expected in the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBr) considering the larger number of animal species. However, the majority of data published are plants, representing 51 per cent among current species occurrence records in GBIF whereas animals only count for 47 per cent.
In Brazil, herbarium networks have traditionally been organized more effectively than zoological collections mostly because these collections are more complex in terms of taxonomic diversity, data management and curation. Nevertheless, in Brazil there is a strong community of taxonomists and the research on Neotropical zoology is recognized as one of the most prolific in the world. This fact is reflected directly in the diversity and quality of collections groups, including those considered rare.
In order to improve representation of animal occurrence records in GBIF, this project aims to strengthen Brazilian zoological collections, providing common guidelines and enhancing capacity in data management, thus increasing publishing of animal data and records available for data use.
This project is aligned with GBIF Work Program priorities 1b, 1d, 1e, 2b, 2c, 3a, and 4b.
Project progress
At final reporting the project successfully achieved all its proposed objectives. Activities undertaken had a great impact on the community, with some having a greater impact than expected.
During the project’s first six months a survey of Brazilian zoological collections was carried out to better understand these and diagnose their situation. Using a questionnaire prepared by a working group with representatives of scientific societies that work with zoological collections and taxonomy, of the 430 collections contacted, 342 answered the questionnaire (80%). The collections belong to 116 institutions.
From September 2021 to May 2022 the project successfully held a series of seven webinars about the use and installation of Specify. Attracting an audience higher than expected, the project also reported that conducting online webinars had been an effective strategy for holding periodic events during the implementation period.
In November 2022, the project then held its final workshop “Specify: Data management and publication of biological collections” as an in-person event. This was attended by 22 researchers and curators, and afterwards, a forum was installed at SiBBr using the Webconf tool for future use to exchange experiences about installing, importing and using the SPECIFY 6, as well as discussing the use of the Github.
All information, course material including downloadable presentations from the webinars and materials and exercises from the workshop, videos and results of the project is accessible from the SiBBr project page.
On the SiBBr YouTube channel it is also possible to access the different tutorials on data publication and all the webinars held during the project implementation. In addition, from the main interface of SiBBr, in the “About” section, in the “News and Outreach” menu, it is possible to access the Specify Community, which, upon prior registration, will allow access to the rest of content about specify and to recorded meetings.
During implementation the project increased the number of collections and registers at SiBBr and GBIF and at final reporting 402,679 new registers on zoological information were added.
Other results of the project include the translation from English to Portuguese of SPECIFY documentation (accessible via Github), and the development of the manual "Recommendations of Best Practices for Brazilian Biological Collections", which is a complete document with best practices in biological collections and available to the Lusophone community.
Post project, activities envisaged by the project include continuing to add more specimen data in SIBBr and GBIF, and continuing the activities of the Forum of curators.
