63urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:0E0032F4-55AE-5263-8B3C-F4DD637C30C2Biodiversity Information Science and StandardsBISS2535-0897Pensoft Publishers10.3897/biss.2.25885258859556Conference AbstractTDWG P PostersPlantaeNorth AmericaNorth AmericaBringing a Semantic MediaWiki Flora to LifePenderJocelynpender.jocelyn@gmail.comhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0548-9418167SachsJoel L.167MacklinJames A.https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9508-1349167167CuiHong271VallanceAndru272Lujan-ToroBeatriz167RodenhausenThomas271Belisle-LeclercMelanie167LevinGeoffrey273Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, CanadaAgriculture and Agri-Food CanadaOttawaCanadaUniversity of Arizona, Tucson, United States of AmericaUniversity of ArizonaTucsonUnited States of AmericaUnaffiliated, Bristol, United KingdomUnaffiliatedBristolUnited KingdomUniversity of Illinois, Champaign, United States of AmericaUniversity of IllinoisChampaignUnited States of America
2018220520182e25885380D425F-2854-5721-BEA1-FEF6799454AA125545316042018Jocelyn Pender, Joel L. Sachs, James Macklin, Hong Cui, Andru Vallance, Beatriz Lujan-Toro, Thomas Rodenhausen, Melanie Belisle-Leclerc, Geoffrey LevinThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The existing web representation of the Flora of North America (FNA) project needs improvement. Despite being electronically available, it has little more functionality than its printed counterpart. Over the past few years, our team has been working diligently to build a new more effective online presence for the FNA. The main objective is to capitalize on modern Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools built for biodiversity data (Explorer of Taxon Concepts or ETC; Cui et al. 2016), and present the FNA online in both machine and human readable formats. With machine-comprehensible data, the mobilization and usability of flora treatments is enhanced and capabilities for data linkage to a Biodiversity Knowledge Graph (Page 2016) are enabled. For example, usability of treatments increases when morphological statements are parsed into finely grained pieces of data using ETC, because these data can be easily traversed across taxonomic groups to reveal trends. Additionally, the development of new features in our online FNA is facilitated by FNA data parsing and processing in ETC, including a feature to enable users to explore all treatments and illustrations generated by an author of interest. The current status of the ongoing project to develop a Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) platform for the FNA is presented here. New features recently implemented are introduced, challenges in assembling the Semantic MediaWiki are discussed, and future opportunities, which include the integration of additional floras and data sources, are explored. Furthermore, implications of standardization of taxonomic treatments, which work such as this entails, will be discussed.
Flora of North AmericaTaxonomic TreatmentsMorphological DataNatural Language ProcessingExplorer of Taxon ConceptsData MobilizationBiodiversity Knowledge GraphSemantic MediaWiki2018Joint Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information
Standards (TDWG)SPNHC+TDWG 2018Dunedin, New ZealandCollections and data in an uncertain worldPresenting author
Jocelyn Pender
ReferencesCuiHongXuDongfangChongSteven S.RamirezMartinRodenhausenThomasMacklinJames A.LudäscherBertramMorrisRobert A.SotoEduardo M.KochNicolás Mongiardino2016Introducing Explorer of Taxon Concepts with a case study on spider measurement matrix building17471http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12859-016-1352-710.1186/s12859-016-1352-7PageRoderic2016Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph2e8767http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/rio.2.e876710.3897/rio.2.e8767