David Schumann, Postdoctoral Associate, Mississippi State University
Mike Colvin, Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University
D. Todd Jones-Farrand, Conservation Science Coordinator, US Fish and Wildlife Service
Matthew Wagner, State Ichthyologist, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks
Primary biodiversity databases (i.e., species occurrence records) are fundamental to conservation decision making and may provide unprecedented insight into species and community ecology that can support conservation planning in diverse regions. However, the utility and scope of inference provided by open-access and other available distribution data depends on the accessibility of complete surveys collected along temporal, spatial, and environmental gradients.
Current methods to evaluate and visualize biodiversity data are cumbersome and can inhibit hypothesis generation and testing by those unfamiliar with current analytical methods and mapping tools. The advent of web and desktop applications that provide portals to databases and flexible analytical tools to display and assess large datasets can reinvent the role of distributional data and natural history collections by making these data accessible to biologists, policy makers, and the public (Ponder et al. 2001; Graham et al. 2004; Reichman et al. 2011).
We developed an easy-to-use online portal that utilizes widely available distribution data to help users efficiently:
Depict patterns of assemblage structure (e.g., species richness)
Investigate species co-existence patterns
Assess biases in survey data at multiple spatial scales, geographic regions, and through time
This iterative assessment tool can facilitate prioritization schemes for monitoring programs to reduce important biases by targeting under sampled regions and re-evaluating data and assemblage metrics as new occurrence records become available. Moreover, this web-based tool is freely available and accessible to all and will enable hypothesis development and evaluation via its numerous interactive platforms to explore species distributions and assemblage structures.
Status: Prototype application
We demonstrate the utility of this web-based application in the southeastern United States, an area with unparalleled aquatic biodiversity that includes approximately 500 fish species (~60% of all U.S. species).
MULTIPLE SPATIAL SCALES
HYBRID PREVALENCE
INVASIVE SPECIES