Corresponding authors: José Augusto Salim (
Academic editor:
The Brazilian Plant-Pollinator Interactions Network*
generate a diagnosis of plant-pollinator interactions in Brazil; integrate knowledge in pollination of natural, agricultural, urban and restored areas; identify knowledge gaps; support public policy guidelines aimed at the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services for pollination and food production; and encourage collaborative studies among REBIPP participants.
To achieve these goals the group has resumed and built on previous works in data standard definition done under the auspices of the IABIN-PTN (
To achieve those goals three task groups of specialists with similar interests and background (e.g botanists, zoologists, pollination biologists) have been created. Each group is working on the definition of the terms to describe plants, pollinators and their interactions. The glossary created explains their meaning, trying to map the suggested terms into Darwin Core (DwC) terms, and following the TDWG Standards Documentation Standard*
Reaching a consensus on terms and their meaning among members of each group is challenging, since researchers have different views and concerns about which data are important to be included into a standard. That reflects the variety of research questions that underlie different projects and the data they collect. Thus, we ended up having a long list of terms, many of them useful only in very specialized research protocols and experiments, sometimes rarely collected or measured.
Nevertheless we opted to maintain a very comprehensive set of terms, so that a large number of researchers feel that the standard meets their needs and that the databases based on it are a suitable place to store their data, thus encouraging the adoption of the data standard.
An update of the work will soon be available at REBIPP website and will be open for comments and contributions. This proposal of a data standard is also being discussed within the TDWG Biological Interaction Data Interest Group*
The importance of interaction data for guiding conservation practices and ecosystem services provision management has led to the proposal of defining Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) related to biological interactions. Essential Biodiversity Variables (
The terms in the plant-pollinator data standard under discussion at REBIPP will provide information not only on EBV related with interactions, but also on other four EBV classes: species populations, species traits, community composition, ecosystem function and ecosystem structure. As we said, some EBVs for specific ecosystem functions (e.g. pollination) lay beyond interactions network structures. The EBV 'Species interactions' (EBV class 'Community composition') should incorporate other aspects such as frequency (
Overall, we think the proposed plant-pollinator interaction data standard which is currently being developed by REBIPP will contribute to data aggregation, filling many data gaps and can also provide indicators for long-term monitoring, being an essential source of data for EBVs.
Antonio Mauro Saraiva
Mapping of data standard terms to EBVs: terms can be mapped to respective biodiversity variables which potentially could be used to create biodiversity indicators for five EBVs classes.