Research Infrastructures offer capacity to address scientific questions never attempted before: Are all taxa equal?

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
2 Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, Devon, UK
3 Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
4 Flanders Marine Institute, Ostend, Belgium
5 Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO, Ostend, Belgium
6 Centre for Biodiversity, Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia
7 Biology Department, University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
8 Department of Biology, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, South Korea
9 Marine Invertebrates Collections, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia
10 Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria
11 Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA
12 Natural History Museum, London, UK
13 Biodiversity & Geosciences Program, Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia
14 Centrum voor Milieukunde, Research group Zoology: Biodiversity and Toxicology, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium
15 Department of Microbiology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
16 Faculty of Medical Sciences, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
17 British Myriapod and Isopod Group, Ivybridge, Devon, UK
18 Instituto de Biociências, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
19 Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Senckenberg Nature Research Society, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
20 Mediterranean Institute of marine and terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France
21 Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA
22 Department of Invertebrate Zoology & Hydrobiology, University ofLodz, Lodz, Poland
23 Museum Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
24 Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany
25 Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
26 American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA
27 Centro de Ciências Exatas e da Terra, Laboratório de Geologia e Geofísica Marinha e Monitoramento Ambiental, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil
28 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA
29 Faculty of Sciences, Biology Department, Marine Biology Section, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
30 Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Division of Pharmacognosy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
31 Biodiversity Research Centre, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
32 Institute of Marine Biology, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung City, Taiwan
33 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
34 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA
35 Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil
36 Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany
37 Computational Biology Institute, George Washington University, Ashburn, VA, USA
38 Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
39 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
40 UMR Morphodynamique Continentale et Côtière, Université de Caen, Caen, France
41 Belgian National Committee on Antarctic Research, Belgian Academies of Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
42 Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, Netherlands
43 Senckenberg Nature Research Society, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
44 Faculty of Geosciences, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Paleontology and Geobiology, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Munich, Germany
45 Department of Anatomy, Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA
46 Research School of Earth Sciences, Australia National University, Canberra, Australia
47 A.O. Kovalevsky Institute of Marine Biological Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, Sevastopol, Russia
48 Universität Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
49 University of California, Davis, CA, USA
50 Editorial Board, WoRMS, Duivendrecht, Netherlands
51 Department of Biology, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA
52 Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
53 Department of Geology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
54 School of the Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
55 Graduate School of Science and School of Science, Department of Biology, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
56 Hydrozoan Research Laboratory, Tourves, France
57 Department of Zoology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
58 Institute for Marine and Coastal Research, University of Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik, Croatia
59 Department of Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal, Mexico
60 Faculty of Life Sciences,Vienna Ecology Center, Department of Limnology and Oceanography, University ofVienna, Vienna, Austria
61 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alaska, Anchorage, AL, USA
62 Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Blanes, Spain
63 Museum and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Australia
64 Faculty of Sciences, Departamento de Biología Animal, University of Málaga, Malaga, Spain
65 Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnologia Mazatlán, Universidad Nacional Autonoma deMexico, Mexico, Mexico
66 Department of Aquatic Ecology, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Unidad Chetumal, Chetumal, Mexico
67 National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, New Zealand
68 Deptartment of Invertebrate Zoology & Hydrobiology, University ofLodz, Lodz, Poland
69 Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche e Ambientali, National Interuniversity Consortium For Marine Sciences, Laboratory of Zoology and Marine Biology, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
70 Laboratorio di Biologia Marina, University of Seville, Seville, Spain
71 Department of Life Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
72 Biology Department, University ofGhent, Ghent, Belgium
73 Department of Biological Sciences, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South-Africa
74 Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Canada
75 Department of Life Sciences, Alfonso University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
76 Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA
77 Biological Institute, Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology, University ofCopenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
78 Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden
79 Editorial Board, WoRMS, Portland, OR, USA
80 Queensland Museum, South Brisbane, Australia
81 National Oceanography Centre, Ocean Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
82 Department of Geology and Paleontology, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
83 Laboratório de coleções zoológicas, Instituto Butantan, São Paulo, Brasil
84 Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Japan
85 Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
86 Zoological Institute und Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
87 Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, Esporles, Universitat de les Illes Baleares, Mallorca, Spain
88 Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum, University ofHamburg, Hamburg, Germany
89 Department of Life Sciences, Dankook University, Seoul, South Korea
90 South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia
91 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
92 Ecology and Conservation Group, Massey University, Institute of Natural Sciences, Auckland, New Zealand
93 A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
94 Zoologisches Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany
95 P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
96 Zoological Museum, University ofCopenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
97 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bari, Bari, Italy
98 Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, The University of Southern Mississippi, Ocean Springs, MS, USA
99 Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and AquaculturΕ, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
100 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA
101 Deptartment of Invertebrate Zoology & Hydrobiology, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland
102 Dipartimento di Zoologia e Genetica Evoluzionistica, Università degli studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy
103 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
104 Department of Biology, University Brunei Darussalam, Rimba, Brunei
105 Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
106 British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge, UK
107 Faculty of Biology and Geography, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
108 German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research, Senckenberg am Meer, Wilhelmshaven, Germany
109 Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, Friday Harbor, USA
110 Department of Invertebrate Zoology & Geology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA
111 Instituto de Biociências, Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
112 Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, São José dos Pinhais, Brazil
113 Department of Life Sciences, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, TX, USA
114 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
115 Stazione Zoologica 'Anton Dohrn' of Naples, Naples, Italy
116 Department of Animal Ecology & Systematics, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
117 Naturhistorisches Museum der Burgergemeinde, Bern, Switzerland
118 Faculty of Science, Department of Biological Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
119 Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Hanoi, Vietnam
120 Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
121 School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
122 Toxicology and Hazard Assessment Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
123 Research Center for Coastal Lagoon and Environments, Shimane University, Shimane, Japan
124 Graduate School of Engineering and Science, University of Ryukyus, Senbaru, Japan
125 Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
126 Université Claude Bernard, Lyon, France
127 Fisheries Service, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Protected Resources Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Santa Cruz, CA, USA
128 Muzeul National de Istorie Naturala Grigore Antipa, Bucharest, Romania
129 Ulster Museum, National Museums of Northern Ireland, Holywood, UK
130 Biology Department, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, IL, USA
131 Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
132 Bishop Museum, Honolulu, HI, USA
133 University of Ryukyus, Senbaru, Japan
134 Harte Research Institute for Gulf ofMexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA
135 Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Gijón, Gijón, Spain
136 National Oceanography Centre, School of Ocean & Earth Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
137 Department of zoology and animal cell dynamics, University of the Basque country, Vizcaya, Spain
138 Faculty of Biology Institute of Zoology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
139 Institute of animal ecology and cell biology, ITZ, Ecology and Evolution, University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany
140 University of Cambridge, CASP, Cambridge, UK
141 University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
142 Centro Universitário de Volta Redonda, Volta Redonda, Brazil
143 Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal doRio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
144 Department of Zoology and Aquaculture, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh, India
145 Charles Sturt University, Sydney, Australia
146 University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA
147 Faculty of Life Sciences, Department of Zoology, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
148 Fish Vet Group Asia Limited, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK
149 Institute of Sea Fisheries, Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Braunschweig, Germany
150 Tropical Biosphere Research Center, Sesoko Station, University of Ryukyus, Sesoko Island, Japan
151 Biotechnical Faculty, Department of Biology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
152 Museu de Oceanografia "Dr. Petrônio Alves Coelho", Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil
153 Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Munich, Germany
154 Museu de Oceanografia "Dr. Petrônio Alves Coelho", Laboratório de Evolução e Diversidade Aquática, Universidade Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho", Marília, Brazil
155 Instituut voor Natuur- en Bosonderzoek, Afdeling Biodiversiteit en Natuurlijk Milieu, Onderzoeksgroep Ecosysteemdiversiteit, Vlaamse overheid, Beleidsdomein Leefmilieu, Natuur en Energie, Brussels, Belgium
156 National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
157 Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
158 El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Lerma Campeche, Mexico
159 School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA
160 Biology Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
161 Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi - Sede di Firenze, Italian National Research Council, Florence, Italy
162 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan
163 Bergen Museum, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
164 Environmental Laboratory & Ocean Monitoring Division, Orange County Sanitation District, Fountain Valley, CA, USA
165 Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough, UK
166 Editorial Board, WoRMS, Hilversum, Netherlands
167 Oceanographic Center, Nova Southeastern University, Dania Beach, FL, USA
168 Laboratory One, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, USA
169 Geological Museum, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
170 Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Biología, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina
171 University of Modena e Reggio, Emilia, Modena, Italy
172 Center for the Study of Biological Complexity, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA
173 Department of Zoology and Animal Ecology, Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine
174 Finnish Museum of Natural History, University ofHelsinki, Helsinki, Finland
175 Eurofins Aquasense, Amsterdam, Netherlands
176 Universidade Federal do Pará, Guama, Brazil
177 Merellaan 13, Scherpenheuvel, Belgium
178 School of Zoology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
179 Department of Biology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA
180 College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY, USA
181 California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA
182 Faculty of Science, The Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
183 Departamento de Zoologia, Laboratório de Poliquetas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.26819v2
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Marine Biology, Taxonomy, Zoology
Keywords
LifeWatchGreece, taxa equality, Taxonomic Distinctness, WoRMS
Copyright
© 2018 Arvanitidis et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Arvanitidis CD, Warwick RM, Somerfield PJ, Pavloudi C, Pafilis E, Oulas A, Chatzigeorgiou G, Gerovasileiou V, Patkos T, Bailly N, Hernandez F, Vanhoorne B, Vandepitte L, Appeltans W, Adlard R, Adriaens P, Kee-Jeong A, Shane A, Nesrine A, Anderson G, Martin A, Arango C, Artois T, Atkinson S, Bank R, Barber AD, Barbosa JP, Bartsch I, Bellan-Santini D, Bernot J, Bieler R, Błażewicz M, Bock P, Böttger-Schnack R, Bouchet P, Boury-Esnault N, Boxshall G, Boyko CB, Nunes Brandão S, Bray R, Bruce NL, Cairns S, Campinas Bezerra TN, Cárdenas P, Chan BK, Chan T, Cheng L, Churchill M, Corbari L, Cordeiro R, Cornils A, Crandall KA, Cribb T, D'hondt J, Daly M, Daneliya M, Dauvin J, Davie P, De Broyer C, De Mazancourt V, De Voogd N, Decker P, Defaye D, Dijkstra H, Dohrmann M, Domning D, Downey R, Drapun I, Eisendle-Flöckner U, Ewers-Saucedo C, Faber M, Figueroa D, Finn J, Fonseca G, Fordyce E, Foster W, Furuya H, Galea H, Garcia-Alvarez O, Garic R, Gasca R, Gaviria-Melo S, Gerken S, Gibson D, Gil J, Gittenberger A, Glasby C, Gofas S, Gómez-Noguera SE, González-Solís D, Gordon D, Grabowski M, Gravili C, Guerra-García JM, Guidetti R, Guilini K, Hadfield KA, Hendrycks E, Herrera B, Ho J, Høeg J, Holovachov O, Hooge MD, Hooper J, Horton T, Hughes L, Hyžný M, Moretti LI, Iseto T, Ivanenko VN, Jarms G, Jaume D, Jazdzewski K, Karanovic I, Kim Y, King R, Klautau M, Kolb J, Kotov A, Krapp-Schickel T, Kremenetskaia A, Kristensen R, Kroh A, Kullander S, La Perna R, LeCroy S, Leduc D, Lemaitre R, Lörz A, Lowry J, Macpherson E, Madin L, Mamos T, Manconi R, Marshall B, Marshall DJ, Martin P, McInnes S, Mees J, Meidla T, Merrin K, Miljutin D, Mills C, Mokievsky V, Molodtsova T, Mooi R, Morandini AC, Moreira Da Rocha R, Moretzsohn F, Mortelmans J, Mortimer J, Musco L, Neubauer TA, Neubert E, Neuhaus PN, Nguyen AD, Nielsen C, Norenburg J, O'Hara T, Okahashi H, Opresko D, Osawa M, Ota Y, Paulay G, Perrier V, Perrin W, Petrescu I, Picton B, Pilger JF, Pisera A, Polhemus D, Poore G, Reimer JD, Reip H, Reuscher M, Rios Lopez P, Rius M, Rzhavsky A, Saiz-Salinas J, Sartori AF, Schatz H, Schierwater B, Schmidt-Rhaesa A, Schneider S, Schönberg C, Senna AR, Serejo C, Shaik S, Shamsi S, Sharma J, Shenkar N, Shinn A, Sicinski J, Siegel V, Sierwald P, Simmons E, Sinniger F, Sivell D, Sket B, Smit H, Smol N, Souza-Filho JF, Spelda J, Stampar SN, Stienen E, Stoev P, Stöhr S, Strand M, Suárez-Morales E, Summers M, Swalla BJ, Taiti S, Tanaka M, Tandberg AH, Tang D, Tasker M, ten Hove H, ter Poorten JJ, Thomas J, Thuesen EV, Thuy B, Timi JT, Todaro A, Turon X, Uetz P, Utevsky S, Vacelet J, Väinölä R, van der Meij SE, van Haaren T, Venekey V, Vos C, Walker-Smith G, Walter CT, Watling L, Wayland M, Whipps C, Williams G, Wilson R, Yasuhara M, Zanol J, Zeidler W. 2018. Research Infrastructures offer capacity to address scientific questions never attempted before: Are all taxa equal? PeerJ Preprints 6:e26819v2

Abstract

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and services used by the scientific community to conduct research and foster innovation. LifeWatch ERIC has developed various virtual research environments, which include many virtual laboratories (vLabs) offering high computational capacity and comprehensive collaborative platforms that supporting the needs of digital biodiversity science. Over its 250 years of history, the taxonomic research community has developed a system for describing, classifying and naming taxa across multiple levels. For the marine biota, taxonomic information is organized and made publicly available through the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) that records more than 250,000 described valid species. Although scientists tend to assign an equal status (in terms of contribution to overall diversity) to each taxon used in taxonomy, biogeography, ecology and biodiversity, the question “are all taxa equal?” has never been tested at a global scale. We present evidence that this question can be addressed by applying relatedness indices (Taxonomic Distinctness) over the entire WoRMS metazoan tree. The RvLab, developed by the LifeWatchGreece RI, operating on a high-performance computer cluster, has been used to meet the high computational demands required for such an analysis at a global scale.

Author Comment

This version corrects the author list.