Vince Smith (cybertaxonomist)

Last updated

Vince Smith
NationalityBritish
Alma mater University of Bristol (BSc)
University of Glasgow (PhD)
Awards Bicentenary Medal of the Linnean Society
Ebbe Nielsen Prize
Scientific career
Fields Biodiversity Informatics
Entomology
Taxonomy
Lice
Institutions Natural History Museum, London, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Glasgow
Thesis Avian louse phylogeny (Phthiraptera: Ischnocera) (2000)
Website vsmith.info

Vince Smith (Vincent Stuart Smith) is a British entomologist and biodiversity informatician at the Natural History Museum, London.

Contents

Education and career

Smith completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Bristol, before completing a PhD at the University of Glasgow specialising on parasitic lice (Phthiraptera). He went on to research host-parasite evolution at the University of Glasgow and then the Illinois Natural History Survey, where he helped develop the Biocorder laboratory management software. In 2006, he joined the Natural History Museum, London, as a cybertaxonomist, before becoming a Research Leader in Informatics in 2012 (a position he still holds).

Smith was one of the founding editors of the Biodiversity Data Journal and has led several large EU science projects including SYNTHESYS+ [1] and ViBRANT.

Research

Smith's current research interest is in the field of biodiversity informatics including work relating to implementing Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), [2] development of the museum's Data Portal to make collections available online, [3] as well as methods for digitising museum specimens. [4] Informatics projects for the broader community include development of the Scratchpads virtual research environment and the eMonocot project.[ citation needed ]

Honours and awards

Related Research Articles

Ebbe Schmidt Nielsen was a Danish entomologist influential in systematics and Lepidoptera research, and an early proponent of biodiversity informatics. The journal Invertebrate Systematics was established with significant contributions from Nielsen, and he assisted in the founding of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Nielsen wrote several books, published over eighty scientific papers, and was highly regarded within the scientific community. Following his death, the GBIF organised the Ebbe Nielsen Prize in his memory, awarded annually to promising researchers in the field of biodiversity informatics. The moth Pollanisus nielseni is named after Nielsen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global Biodiversity Information Facility</span> Aggregator of scientific data on biodiversity; data portal

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the world; GBIF's information architecture makes these data accessible and searchable through a single portal. Data available through the GBIF portal are primarily distribution data on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes for the world, and scientific names data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tenthredinoidea</span> Superfamily of insects

The Tenthredinoidea are the dominant superfamily of sawflies within the Symphyta, containing some 8,400 species worldwide, primarily in the family Tenthredinidae. All known larvae are phytophagous, and a number are considered pests.

Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. It is defined as the application of Information technology technologies to management, algorithmic exploration, analysis and interpretation of primary data regarding life, particularly at the species level organization. Modern computer techniques can yield new ways to view and analyze existing information, as well as predict future situations. Biodiversity informatics is a term that was only coined around 1992 but with rapidly increasing data sets has become useful in numerous studies and applications, such as the construction of taxonomic databases or geographic information systems. Biodiversity informatics contrasts with "bioinformatics", which is often used synonymously with the computerized handling of data in the specialized area of molecular biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roderic D. M. Page</span> New Zealand-born evolutionary biologist

Roderic Dugald Morton Page is a New Zealand-born evolutionary biologist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the author of several books. As of 2015 he is professor at the University of Glasgow and was editor of the journal Systematic Biology until the end of 2007. His main interests are in phylogenetics, evolutionary biology and bioinformatics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biodiversity Heritage Library</span> Discipline-oriented digital libraries

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to address this challenge by digitizing the natural history literature held in their collections and making it freely available for open access as part of a global "biodiversity community". The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develop tools and services to facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed by Global Names Architecture, BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing researchers to locate publications about specific taxa. In partnership with the Internet Archive and through local digitization efforts, BHL's portal provides free access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 59 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries.

A taxonomic database is a database created to hold information on biological taxa – for example groups of organisms organized by species name or other taxonomic identifier – for efficient data management and information retrieval. Taxonomic databases are routinely used for the automated construction of biological checklists such as floras and faunas, both for print publication and online; to underpin the operation of web-based species information systems; as a part of biological collection management ; as well as providing, in some cases, the taxon management component of broader science or biology information systems. They are also a fundamental contribution to the discipline of biodiversity informatics.

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is an online repository of information about Australian plants, animals, and fungi. Development started in 2006. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an organisation significantly involved in the development of the ALA. The Atlas of Living Australia is the Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The ALA is being used to help assess suitability of revegetation projects by determining species vulnerability to climatic and atmospheric change.

Thelosia truncata is a moth in the Apatelodidae family. It was first described by William Schaus in 1894, as Trabala (?) truncata. It is found in Brazil (Parana).

Pensoft Publishers are a publisher of scientific literature based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Pensoft was founded in 1992, by two academics: Lyubomir Penev and Sergei Golovatch. It has published over 1000 academic and professional books and currently publishes over 60 peer-reviewed open access scientific journals including ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, Check List, Comparative Cytogenetics, Journal of Hymenoptera Research, Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, and Zoosystematics and Evolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine N. Norton</span> American judge

Catherine Norton was an American librarian. She was the first Director of Information Systems at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Tree of Life</span> Online phylogenetic tree of life

The Open Tree of Life is an online phylogenetic tree of life – a collaborative effort, funded by the National Science Foundation. The first draft, including 2.3 million species, was released in September 2015. The Interactive graph allows the user to zoom in to taxonomic classifications, phylogenetic trees, and information about a node. Clicking on a species will return its source and reference taxonomy.

The World Spider Catalog (WSC) is an online searchable database concerned with spider taxonomy. It aims to list all accepted families, genera and species, as well as provide access to the related taxonomic literature. The WSC began as a series of individual web pages in 2000, created by Norman I. Platnick of the American Museum of Natural History. After Platnick's retirement in 2014, the Natural History Museum of Bern (Switzerland) took over the catalog, converting it to a relational database.

The Pan-European Species-directories Infrastructure (PESI) provides a mechanism to deliver an integrated, annotated checklist of the species occurring in Europe, aiming to cover the Western Palearctic biogeographic region. PESI integrates the efforts of five community networks, Euro+Med PlantBase (E+M); Fauna Europaea (FaEu); the European Register of Marine Species (ERMS), and Species Fungorum Europe (SF-EU), into a single European checklist. The PESI checklist serves as a taxonomic standard and backbone for Europe.

Flagelliphantes is a genus of dwarf spiders that was first described by Michael I. Saaristo & A. V. Tanasevitch in 1996. It was originally erected to contain three species, all found in Russia: F. bergstromi, F. flagellifer, and F. sterneri. In 2023, F. yunxia from Jilin province, China was assigned to this genus.

<i>Theromaster brunneus</i> Species of harvestman/daddy longlegs

Theromaster brunneus is a species of armoured harvestman in the family Travuniidae. It is found in North America.

<i>Siro exilis</i> Species of harvestman/daddy longlegs

Siro exilis is a species of mite harvestman in the family Sironidae. It is found in North America.

Bionomia is a database and database entry tool which permits the name strings of collectors, and of taxonomists who determine specimen data, to be assigned to the unique person who collected or identified the specimen. If the person is living, this is done via their ORCID iD, and if dead, via their Wikidata identifier. It thereby resolves ambiguity where two or more collectors have similar names; or where one collector has worked under two names, or a single name written in two or more ways. The specimen data associated with, and used by, Bionomia are the aggregated GBIF data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Rees (scientist)</span>

Anthony J. J. ("Tony") Rees is a British-born software developer, data manager and biologist resident in Australia since 1986, and previously a data manager with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. He is responsible for developing a number of software systems currently used in science data management, including c-squares, Taxamatch, and IRMNG, the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera. He has also been closely involved with the development of other biodiversity informatics initiatives including the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), AquaMaps, and the iPlant Taxonomic Name Resolution Service (TNRS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Baker (entomologist)</span> British entomologist and bioacoustician

Ed Baker is a British entomologist, bioacoustician and orthopterist at the Natural History Museum, London.

References

  1. Smith, VS, et al. (2019). "SYNTHESYS+ Abridged Grant Proposal". Research Ideas and Outcomes. 5. doi: 10.3897/rio.5.e46404 . S2CID   203217185.
  2. Baker, E.; Rycroft, S.D.; Smith, V.S. (2014). "Linking multiple biodiversity informatics platforms with Darwin Core Archives". Biodiversity Data Journal. 2 (2): e1039. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.2.e1039 . PMC   3964728 . PMID   24723785.
  3. Scott, B.; Baker, E.; Woodburn, M.; Vincent, S.; Hardy, H.; Smith, V.S. (2019). "The Natural History Museum Data Portal". Database. 2019: baz038. doi:10.1093/database/baz038. PMC   6459053 . PMID   30985890 . Retrieved 27 November 2021.
  4. Allan, E.; Livermore, L.; Shchedrina, O.; Smith, V.S. (2019). "A Novel Automated Mass Digitisation Workflow for Natural History Microscope Slides". Biodiversity Data Journal. 7: e32342. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.7.e32342 . PMC   6408422 . PMID   30863197.
  5. "15th June 2015: Medal Winners". Linnean Society of London. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
  6. "Ebbe Nielsen Challenge" . Retrieved 30 November 2021.