Asase Alex, Sainge Moses N, Radji Raoufou A, Ugbogu Omokafe A, Peterson A Townsend
Department of Plant and Environmental Biology University of Ghana P.O. Box LG 55 Legon Ghana.
Tropical Plant Exploration Group (TroPEG) P.O. Box 18 Mundemba Cameroon.
Appl Plant Sci. 2020 Jan 19;8(1):e11318. doi: 10.1002/aps3.11318. eCollection 2020 Jan.
The field of biodiversity informatics has developed rapidly in recent years, with broad availability of large-scale information resources. However, online biodiversity information is biased spatially as a result of slow and uneven capture and digitization of existing data resources. The West African Plants Initiative approach to data capture is a prototype of a novel solution to the problems of the traditional model, in which the institutional "owner" of the specimens is responsible for digital capture of associated data.
We developed customized workflows for data capture in formats directly and permanently useful to the "owner" herbarium, and digitized significant numbers of new biodiversity records, adding to the information available for the plants of the region.
In all, 190,953 records of species in 1965 genera and 331 families were captured by mid-2018. These data records covered 16 West African countries, with most of the records (10,000-99,999) from Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, and Cameroon, and the fewest data records from Mauritania (<100 records). The West African Plants Initiative has increased available digital accessible knowledge records for West African plants by about 54%. Several of the project institutions have put initial project data online as part of their Global Biodiversity Information Facility data contributions. The average cost of data capture ranged from US$0.50-1.00 per herbarium sheet.
Data capture has been cost-effective because it is much less expensive than de novo field collections, allows for development of information resources even for regions in which political situations make contemporary field sampling impossible, and provides a historical baseline against which to compare newer data as they become available. This new paradigm in specimen digitization has considerable promise to accelerate and improve the process of generating high-quality biodiversity information, and can be replicated and applied in many biodiversity-rich, information-poor regions to remedy the present massive gaps in information availability.
近年来，生物多样性信息学领域发展迅速，大规模信息资源广泛可得。然而，由于现有数据资源的采集和数字化缓慢且不均衡，在线生物多样性信息存在空间偏差。西非植物倡议的数据采集方法是针对传统模式问题的一种新型解决方案的原型，在传统模式中，标本的机构“所有者”负责相关数据的数字化采集。
我们开发了定制工作流程，以直接且永久适用于“所有者”植物标本馆的格式进行数据采集，并将大量新的生物多样性记录数字化，增加了该地区植物的可用信息。
截至2018年年中，共采集了1965个属、331个科的190,953条物种记录。这些数据记录涵盖16个西非国家，大部分记录（10,000 - 99,999条）来自科特迪瓦、加纳、多哥、尼日利亚和喀麦隆，来自毛里塔尼亚的数据记录最少（<100条）。西非植物倡议使西非植物的可用数字可获取知识记录增加了约54%。几个项目机构已将项目初始数据作为其对全球生物多样性信息设施数据贡献的一部分在线发布。数据采集的平均成本为每张植物标本馆标本0.50 - 1.00美元。
数据采集具有成本效益，因为它比重新进行野外采集成本低得多，即使对于因政治局势而无法进行当代野外采样的地区也能开发信息资源，并提供一个历史基线，以便在新数据可用时与之比较。标本数字化的这种新范式很有希望加速和改进高质量生物多样性信息的生成过程，并可在许多生物多样性丰富但信息匮乏的地区复制和应用，以弥补目前信息可用性方面的巨大差距。
