Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Dorothee Sandmann (dsandma@gwdg.de)
Received: 11 Jun 2019 | Published: 13 Jun 2019
© 2019 Dorothee Sandmann, Stefan Scheu, Anton Potapov
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: Sandmann D, Scheu S, Potapov A (2019) Ecotaxonomy: Linking taxa with traits and integrating taxonomical and ecological research. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3: e37146. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37146
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Ecological roles of underexplored groups, such as tropical invertebrates, can be inferred from their functional traits, such as body mass, dispersal ability, reproductive mode and feeding habits. Despite a strong need, a common database for invertebrate traits is yet to be created. Traits are defined as a property of individual organisms, however many parameters are similar in groups of organisms, i.e., in species or even at higher taxonomic levels. Such parameters may be attributed to taxa instead of individuals. Linking both facilitates ecological and conservation studies based on taxa or phylogenetic units. Another problem hampering understanding of tropical ecosystems is the high proportion of undescribed species, particularly in soil communities. To estimate diversity, ecologists often have to operate with morphospecies instead of Linnean taxa. Morphospecies typically are defined independently in each project or even by each person, which does not allow consistent re-use.
Ecotaxonomy database (ecotaxonomy.org), implemented as an open platform, addresses these issues (Fig.
taxonomy, traits, virtual research environment, tropical arthropods, functional traits, morphology, identification key
Dorothee Sandmann
Biodiversity_Next 2019
EFForTS Project