Indexing Biotic Interactions in GBIF data

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF 2022a) has indexed more than 2 billion occurrence records from 70,147 datasets. These datasets often include "hidden" biotic interaction data because biodiversity communities use the Darwin Core standard (DwC, Wieczorek et al. 2012) in different ways to document interactions. In this study, we extracted interactions GBIF using an approach similar that employed Biotic Interactions (GloBI; Poelen 2014) and summarized results. Here aim present estimation of available GBIF, showing claims can be automatically found GBIF. Our results suggest much gained by increased focus on development tools help index curate existing Combined with standardization best practices for sharing interactions, such as initiative plant-pollinators (Salim 2022), rapidly contribute meet open principles (Wilkinson 2016). We used Preston (Elliott 2020), open-source software versions datasets, copy all GBIF-indexed graph version (Poelen 2020) during study contains 58,504 Archive (DwC-A) format, totaling 574,715,196 records. After retrieval verification, were processed Elton. Elton extracts supports 20+ file formats, including various types elements DwC also helps align (e.g., host of, parasite associated with) Relations Ontology (RO, Mungall making it easier discover across a heterogeneous collection Using specific mapping between terms RO*1, 30,167,984 potential (with non-empty values scanned terms) 15,248,478 recognized types. Taxonomic name validation was performed Nomer, which maps input names variety taxonomic catalogs. only considered record valid where type could mapped term RO Nomer source target taxa. Based workflow described Fig. 1, 7,947,822 (52% interactions). Most them generic ( interacts_ , 87.5%), but remaining 12.5% (993,477 records) included host-parasite plant-animal majority involved plants (78%), animals (14%) fungi (6%). conclusion, there are many embedded registered large indexers aggregators like iDigBio, BioCASE. exposed these combined functionality (for extraction), reliable dataset tracking) alignment). Nonetheless, new vocabularies, standards practice guides would facilitate aggregation data, diversification model 2022b) beyond occurrences data. That is TDWG Interest Group Biological Data (TDWG 2022).