S01 - New Joint Pathways for the Biodiversity Data Community and Systematists

This symposium has been cancelled; contributions moved to CO Contributed Oral Presentations

Abstract

High quality biodiversity data in collections are generated and curated by systematists whose research endeavors include creating and revising the names and evolutionary concepts that link occurrence records into biologically meaningful units. Systematists also benefit from the availability of biodiversity data suitable to support and enrich systematic research. That said, this symposium theme starts off by stipulating that the relationship between the systematist and biodiversity data communities “has room for improvement”, and that an important first step to achieving this is to encourage early-career systematists to routinely attend TDWG meetings, interact with its leaders, have a voice in its working groups and committees, etc. This “joint new pathways” symposium envisions an open, widely advertised search for speakers in the systematic community who make abundant use of standards compliant data while maintaining an active and expanding systematic research program, and who will share with the TDWG and SPNHC communities their experiences in working with occurrence records facilitated by standards and on-line services. An underlying motivation is data quality and trust in data - where trust is actually not just a matter of the quality (correctness) of the information, but also an outcome of social interactions and designs that give experts an adequate voice in the data aggregation process (see https://doi.org/10.1093/database/bax100). This symposium will feature how a Ph.D. student in insect systematics experiences using data provided through an iDigBio or GBIF portal, how these data get used to support systematic research publications and inferences, how they can enhance an early-career systematist’s professional standing, and what design shortcomings might be addressed to further improve matters.