Jana Hoffmann

Actionable, long-term stable and semantic web compatible identifiers for access to biological collection objects

With biodiversity research activities being increasingly shifted to the web, the need for a system of persistent and stable identifiers for physical collection objects becomes increasingly pressing. The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities agreed on a common system of HTTP-URI-based stable identifiers which is now rolled out to its member organizations. The system follows Linked Open Data principles and implements redirection mechanisms to human-readable and machine-readable representations of specimens facilitating seamless integration into the growing semantic web. The implementation of stable identifiers across collection organizations is supported with open source provider software scripts, best practices documentations and recommendations for RDF metadata elements facilitating harmonized access to collection information in web portals. Database URL: http://cetaf.org/cetaf-stable-identifiers

The BioCASe Monitor Service - A tool for monitoring progress and quality of data provision through distributed data networks.

Abstract The BioCASe Monitor Service (BMS) is a web-based tool for coordinators of distributed data networks that provide information to web-portals and data aggregators via the BioCASe Provider Software. Building on common standards and protocols, it has three main purposes: (1) monitoring provider’s progress in data provision, (2) facilitating checks of data mappings with a focus on the structure, plausibility and completeness, and (3) verifying compliance of provided data for transformation into other target schemas. Herein two use cases, GBIF-D and OpenUp!, are presented in which the BMS is being applied for monitoring the progress in data provision and performing quality checks on the ABCD (Access to Biological Collection Data) schema mapping. However, the BMS can potentially be used with any conceptual data schema and protocols for querying web services. Through flexible configuration options it is highly adaptable to specific requirements and needs. Thus, the BMS can be easily implemented into coordination workflows and reporting duties within other distributed data network projects.

Checklist of Recent thecideoid brachiopods from the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, with a description of a new species of Thecidellina from Europa Island and a re-description of T. blochmanni Dall from Christmas Island.

Compilation of a checklist of Recent thecideoid brachiopods from the Indian Ocean and Red Sea indicates that members of this superfamily are represented by a small number of species. The subfamily Lacazellinae is represented by Ospreyella maldiviana from the Maldive Islands but the presence of Lacazella cannot yet be confirmed in the Indian Ocean as the holotype of Lacazella mauritiana from Mauritius is lost. The subfamily Thecidellininae is represented by Thecidellina blochmanni from Christmas Island in the eastern Indian Ocean and the Red Sea while a new species T. europa is here described from Europa Island in the Mozambique Channel. The subfamily Minutellinae is represented by Minutella minuta from Samper Bank and Walters Bank in the south-western Indian Ocean and in the Red Sea. Since the holotype of Thecidellina blochmanni from Flying Fish Cove, Christmas Island is also lost, this species is re-described and illustrated mainly from topotypes in the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, from which a suggested neotype has been selected.

Redescription of Griffithsius latipes (Griffiths, 1976) (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Phoxocephalidae) from the coast of Namibia

A full redescription of Griffithsius latipes (Griffiths, 1976) is given. This is necessary because the original description is incomplete and contains inaccuracies.