Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20041 European Register of Marine Species version 2.0 data management, current status and plans for the future Edward Vanden Berghe, Philippe Bouchet, Geoff Boxshall, Mark Costello, Chris Emblow

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20042 ERMS overview European Register of Marine Species Result of EU project, 10 partners Managed by SMEBD Will form taxonomic backbone of EurOBIS and MarBEF data management Will be updated

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20043 ERMS v 1.0 EU project (MAST) 2 years: contractual partners responsible for data management, promotion of the product, dialogue with end users… 100+ editors of taxonomic lists not necessarily from the partner institutions responsible for the content

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20044 ERMS v 1.0 content List of names Synonymy for some groups Very limited distribution information level of major sea area (Atlantic, Mediterranean,…) very incomplete

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20045 ERMS geographic scope

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20046 ERMS taxonomic scope Multicellular organisms Animals, plants, macroorganisms Protoctista not part of the original plan Gaps exist

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20047 ERMS statistics all taxa species valid Biota Animalia Mollusca Platyhelm Arthropoda Fungi Plantae Protoctista

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20048 ERMS v 1.0 availability

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/20049 ERMS v 1.0 weaknesses Taxonomic gaps Set of excel sheets, no proper database Checklists, some created from scratch, some compilations of existing regional lists No hierarchy Detail available varies across checklists distribution info, synonymy, literature… No integration between checklists Programme-based, no continuation

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ SMEBD Society for the Management of European Biodiversity Data All data contributors are members of the society Society manages intellectual property right on behalf of authors ERMS authors, discussions to include also Fauna Europaea authors

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ MarBEF Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning EU FP 6 ‘Network of Excellence’ VLIZ does data management Needed taxonomic authority list for integration of databases EurOBIS SMEBD gave mandate to VLIZ/MarBEF to manage data

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 1.1 Integrating spreadsheets in one relational database MS SQL Server, front end Access Structure is open hierarchy (± ITIS) Content remains same as ERMS 1.0 some inconsistencies removed But adding taxonomic hierarchy

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 1.1 structure

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 1.1 availability

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 2.0 Content will be updated through web interface snapshot frozen and archived at regular intervals Structure revised to allow audit trail who did what, when Taxon editors have been invited Extra information (not strictly ERMS) Feeding types, distribution info (country), trophic level, biomass…

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 2.0 editorial structure ERMS Editorial committee Arvanitides, Bouchet, Boxshall, Costello (chair), Emblow, Vanden Berghe (db) responsible for management Associate editors (‘Group coordinators’ of FE) responsible for part of taxonomic tree have edit rights through web site Review editors (‘Validation’ of FE) assist associate editors

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS v 2.0 db structure

Ocean Biodiversity Information – 29/11-1/12/ ERMS future Species 2000 Europa member ‘EuroHub’ for Species 2000, together with Fauna Europaea and Euro+Med PlantBase Through dynamic link distributed system Spice protocol developed under Species 2000 Europa possible alternatives are DiGIR and BioCASe Contribution to global systems ITIS URMO