Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Johanna Kovar-Eder (johanna.eder@smns-bw.de)
Received: 12 Jun 2019 | Published: 18 Jun 2019
© 2019 Johanna Kovar-Eder, Lars Krogmann, Michael Rasser, Anita Roth-Nebelsick, Laura Tilley
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: Kovar-Eder J, Krogmann L, Rasser M, Roth-Nebelsick A, Tilley L (2019) Palaeontological and Biological Collections – Bridging the gap. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3: e37183. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37183
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Palaeontology and biology are closely related sciences, as are the collections associated with them. Nevertheless there are differences between the two types of collections and the scientific data that they yield with regards to taxonomy, climate and ecology. In order to bridge the gap between the two subjects, it is important to clarify what these differences are and how they can be used to supplement research that addresses future environmental/climatic issues. In biology, valuable traits of the whole organism serve for taxonomy. In the fossil record, a morphospecies concept needs to be used because specimens are mainly preserved fragmentarily and palaeontologists have to take advantage of morphological traits that are often disregarded by biologists. Another difference is that biological objects represent modern time, while the fossil record provides valuable information on a deep time perspective, i.e., in a third dimension. Yet, these two disciplines obviously depend on each other: while biologists provide palaeontologists with information about unfossilised soft parts, palaeontology can help to solve questions about life in the past.
Using four current case studies from the Stuttgart Natural History Museum, we provide examples of how biological and palaeontological information stored in museum collections are linterlinked, and particularly how palaeontology can help to solve current and future problems. We also highlight the potential of palaeontological collections and demonstrate the necessity of digitizing large quantities of objects as well as the related basic information. Case studies are:
These case studies not only show how biology and palaeontology are interlinked, but the first three studies are sound examples of how the knowledge of the past helps to understand the present. Furthermore, the first two studies are highly relevant for predicting the future. All of this information can only be used appropriately, if large proportions of data are available that include information on geology and age. For this reason, the Access to Biological Collection Data Extended for Geosciences (ABCD EFG) standard is so important, as it extends the two-dimensional view (Recent) into a third dimension (deep time).
Our vision is an integrated modelling of past, present and future scenarios, whether for climate or ecosystem change, or geological hazards. Considering the deep time information, we can model how changes would take place under natural conditions, i.e., without anthropogenic influence. This requires the availability of large data sets of taxonomic information on the EFG level from all over the world.
biology, palaeontology, collection data, digitisation, integrated modelling of the past and future
Johanna Kovar-Eder
Biodiversity_Next 2019