National insect monitoring in Norway

Jens Åström

doi:10.15468/2jwnc6

National insect monitoring in Norway

Citation

Åström J (2022). National insect monitoring in Norway. Version 1.7. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. Sampling event dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/2jwnc6 accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-03-27.

Description

The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (https://www.nina.no) conducts a general monitoring of terrestrial insects in Norway since 2020, on behalf of the Norwegian Environmental Agency (https://www.miljodirektoratet.no/). As of 2021, the monitoring is limited to the ecosystems "Forest" and "Semi-natural land" in the region Østlandet, and to "Semi-natural land" in Trøndelag. Expansion to other regions or ecosystems may occur in the future. The monitoring is based on passive sampling through malaisetraps with addition of windowtraps in forests. Identification of insects is mainly done through metabarcoding after a soft lysis of the material. Caution should be excercised when interpreting occurrences of single species, as the metabarcoding and bioinformatics may contain errors. Three possible errors to be aware of: 1) false positives of some species not present in the sample, 2) wrong asssignment of DNA-sequence to species name, 3) false negatives of species present in the sample. The bioinformatics will likely be updated each following year on the entire dataset, with more and more DNA-sequencies being assigned to a species name, and some species assignments being corrected, as the reference libraries continue to improve. The sample design is expressed through a series of hierarchical event levels, that should be unpacked before analysis. We also collect a range of environmental data at the sampling sites. These are collected in the dynamicalProperties column as a JSON-string, at the hierarchical level they are related to. An R-script for unpacking the data into a more usable format is (will be) available at https://github.com/NINAnor/national_insect_monitoring Brief explanation of the hierarchical structure of the dataset: 1) The occurrence table can be joined to the event table through the parentEvent, which joins to an 2) identification event. This level exists because any sample may have gone through several identification events, possibly with differing methods. The identification events joins through its parentEvent with 3) a sampling_trap event, which designates a single trap in a single sampling event at a location. Sampling_trap events are joined through their parentEvent to a 4) locality sampling event, which is a single sampling period in a locality. Sampling events can have 1 or more traps (sampling trap events). Finally, the locality sampling events can be joined through their parentEvent to a 5) year locality event, which designates the sampling of insects in a single locality in a year. Relevant metadata or collected explanatory data is attached to each level, with the dynamicProperties column collecting the datatypes that the Darwin Event Core doesn't presently cater to. This is the second version of this dataset. This version does not contain the records with taxonomy matches that has been flagged as uncertain, according to our bioinformatics pipeline (Identification confidence LOW, MEDIUM). The full data set can be sent on request.

Sampling Description

Method steps

Taxonomic Coverages

The sampling and bioinformatics focus on insects, but other classes of Arthropods also occur in the dataset.

Metazoa
rank: kingdom
Arthropoda
rank: phylum

Geographic Coverages

Currently (as of 2021) the dataset is limited to the Southern and mid-regions of Norway (Østlandet and Trøndelag), but the scope could potentially expand to cover the entire norwegian mainland.

Bibliographic Citations

Contacts

Jens Åström
originator
position: Research Scientist
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Postboks 5685 Torgarden
Trondheim
7485
NO
Telephone: +4740634121
email: jens.astrom@nina.no
homepage: https://jenast.github.io
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6114-0440

Jens Åström
metadata author
position: Research Scientist
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Postboks 5685 Torgarden
Trondheim
7485
NO
Telephone: +4740634121
email: jens.astrom@nina.no
homepage: http://jenast.github.io
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6114-0440

Jens Åström
principal investigator
position: Research scientist
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Postboks 5685 Torgarden
Trondheim
7485
NO
Telephone: +4740634121
email: jens.astrom@nina.no
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6114-0440

Jens Åström
administrative point of contact
position: Research Scientist
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research
Postboks 5685 Torgarden
Trondheim
7485
NO
Telephone: +4740634121
email: jens.astrom@nina.no
homepage: https://jenast.github.io
userId: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6114-0440