I’ve just read this paper analyzing more than 23,000 decapod crustacean species names written by editors of the DecaNet database. They categorized names following a similar analysis done on spider names in 2023 and added these categories to each species name on DecaNet now, which is a neat detail in addition to all they provide already! I’ve been in a species name database rabbit hole for months now; there’s been so much to learn about the species I get to work with these days, and the information for marine species is really accessible (thanks, WoRMS!), which has made the learning far more approachable and manageable than I thought it would be.
In the spirit of the “How many species of bee are there?” paper in review by Dorey et al., I think it would be interesting to see a similar analysis of bee species names. Creating etymological categories would be a fun piece of a future bee species name database, too!
Other cool informatics things I’ve read lately that sparked thoughts about wild bee occurrence data and conservation:
- GBIF and DNA – I just learned that GBIF is actively developing a metabarcoding data program
- Guide to publishing biological survey and monitoring data to GBIF
- Taxonomic treatments in an updated Darwin Core conceptual model (this is a case study of the new GBIF data model effort that led to the development of the Darwin Core Data Package, which is currently under public review)
After speaking at EntSoc a few weeks ago (my slides are here), I updated the Wiki of the Wild Bee Data Standard GitHub repository to share more resources on GBIF and Darwin Core and more papers to check out on using occurrence data.