Proceedings of TDWG : Conference Abstract
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Conference Abstract
Invasive Organisms Information: A proposed TDWG Task Group
expand article infoQuentin Groom‡, Steven J Baskauf§, Peter Desmet|, Melodie A McGeoch, Shyama Pagad#,¤, Dmitry Schigel«, Ramona Walls», John Wilson˄, Paula F Zermoglio˅
‡ Botanic Garden Meise, Meise, Belgium
§ Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Brussels, Belgium
¶ School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
# IUCN SSC INvasive Species Specialist Group, Auckland, New Zealand
¤ University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
« Global Biodiversity Information Facility - Secretariat, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
» CyVerse, Tucson, United States of America
˄ South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Johannesburg, South Africa
˅ Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA-CONICET), University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Corresponding author: Quentin Groom (quentin.groom@plantentuinmeise.be)
Received: 14 Aug 2017 | Published: 14 Aug 2017
© 2017 Quentin Groom, Steven Baskauf, Peter Desmet, Melodie McGeoch, Shyama Pagad, Dmitry Schigel, Ramona Walls, John Wilson, Paula Zermoglio
This 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.
Citation: Groom Q, Baskauf S, Desmet P, McGeoch M, Pagad S, Schigel D, Walls R, Wilson J, Zermoglio P (2017) Invasive Organisms Information: A proposed TDWG Task Group. Proceedings of TDWG 1: e20266. https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.20266
Open Access

Abstract

Invasive species are a global problem for conservation, economics and health. Information on their distribution, spread and impact are essential to inform national and international policy on biodiversity. Furthermore, demand for these data are only likely to increase as recent environmental change results in the widespread reconfiguring of species distributions. Researchers and managers of invasive species require certain elements of data from observations and inventories of species, such as, how the organism was brought to the location, how well established it is and whether it is considered alien to that location. However, Darwin Core either lacks terms sufficient for these purposes or does not have a suitable controlled vocabulary on existing terms to express these concepts clearly and to harmonize data collection.

We are proposing a TDWG task group to make recommendations to improve Darwin Core for invasive species research and management. Some of the specific terms we will look are dwc:establishmentMeans and dwc:occurrenceStatus. However, we may also recommend new terms and controlled vocabularies, including how to express the degree of establishment of an organism at a location.

We will look at current frameworks for alien species data and analyse how these are used both by invasive species specialists and by the broader community collecting biodiversity observations. We will aim to make a proposal that is sufficiently flexible to be of use to the whole community, while providing sufficient resolution to be of use to specialists in invasion biology.

Keywords

invasive species, alien species, Darwin Core, invasion pathway, invasion process

Presenting author

Quentin Groom