Top tip: Featured data uses for 2017

Quick summaries of interesting and important research highlights draws upon GBIF's ongoing literature tracking programme

Featured data uses, January 2017

For nearly a decade, the GBIF Secretariat has tracked scientific literature to identify and record research uses of biodiversity data mobilized through GBIF's network of Participants and publishing institutions.

Having started out as a method for demonstrating the value and impact of GBIF as a research infrastructure, this effort serves as the source for the full catalogue of research and policy uses and citations as well as the wellspring for our steady stream of data use summaries and the more discriminating Science Review we compile and print each year (the curious can peek behind the curtain to see how this works).

With peer-reviewed uses of GBIF-mediated data appearing at the rate of about two papers each day, all of this makes for steady work. But while we've documented this effort in the overview slides we update every other month, we recognize (now) not many people are going to discover featured research in the slides at the back of that deck.

So, in the interest of transparency, we'd like to make a habit of sharing our monthly updates on new and notable research papers. And in the name of full disclosure, we'll kick this off properly below with the papers we identified in January, and push through 2017 month by month over the coming weeks.

Read our summaries, read the papers or read both—we hope you'll agree that, both individually and collectively, they offer insight into the value of providing free and open access to biodiversity data.

Feature: Expanding OBIS beyond species occurrences

  • De Pooter D, Appeltans W, Bailly N et al. (2017) Toward a new data standard for combined marine biological and environmental datasets - expanding OBIS beyond species occurrences. Biodiversity Data Journal 5: e10989. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.5.e10989.
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Feature: Massive diversion project creates conduit for potable water—and possible invaders

  • Liu D, Wang R, Gordon DR, Sun X, Chen L & Wang Y (2017) Predicting Plant Invasions Following China's Water Diversion Project. Environmental Science & Technology 51(3): 1450-1457. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b05577.
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Feature: Using traditional remedies to inspire modern medicines

  • Odonne G, Houël E, Bourdy G & Stien D (2017) Healing leishmaniasis in Amazonia: review of ethnomedicinal concepts and pharmaco-chemical analysis of traditional treatments to inspire modern phytotherapies. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 199: 211-230. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2017.01.048.
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Feature: Fire-resistance in a hotter future

  • Pellegrini AFA, Anderegg WRL, Paine CET et al. (2016) Convergence of bark investment according to fire and climate structures ecosystem vulnerability to future change. Ecology Letters 20(3): 307-316. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.12725.
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Feature: Building a network of Chagas vectors and hosts

  • Rengifo-Correa L, Stephens CR, Morrone JJ, Téllez-Rendón JL & González-Salazar (2016) Understanding transmissibility patterns of Chagas disease through complex vector–host networks. Parasitology 144(6): 760-772. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0031182016002468.
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Feature: to follow

  • Hosoya T, Uzuhashi S, Hosaka K & Kudo S (2016) An assessment of fungi endemic to Japan. Japanese Journal of Mycology 57: 77-84. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.18962/jjom.57.2_77_
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