Photodocumentation_of_Antarctic_Peninsula_Lichens

Paula Casanovas1, Paula Casanovas2, Heather Lynch3, Ron Naveen4, William Fagan2

1 University of Canterbury, School of Biological Sciences, 8041, Christchurch, New Zealand; 2 University of Maryland, 3205 Bio-Psych building, 20742, College Park, United States; 3 Stony Brook University, 113 Life Sciences Bldg, Ecology & Evolution Department, 11794, Stony Brook, United States; 4 Oceanites Inc, P.O. Box 15259, 20825, Chevy Chase, United States

Corresponding author(s): Paula Casanovas (paulacasanovas@gmail.com)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

P Casanovas, HJ Lynch, WF Fagan, R Naveen (2013) Understanding lichen diversity on the Antarctic Peninsula using parataxonomic units as a surrogate for species richness. Ecology 94 (9), 2110-2110 Casanovas et al. 2013

Abstract

As part of the Antarctic Site Inventory (e.g. Lynch et al. 2012, Naveen and Lynch 2011), we have developed a database and gathered photographic information on lichen richness for sites that are frequently visited by tourists on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Keywords: Antarctic Peninsula, lichens, parataxonomic units, citizen science, detectability., Occurrence

Project details

Project title: Understanding lichen diversity on the Antarctic Peninsula using parataxonomic units as a surrogate for species richness
Personnel: Paula Casanovas
Funding: US National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (Award No NSF/OPP – 739515). 
NASA headquarters under the NASA Earth and Space Fellowship Program – grant NNX10AN55H.
Study area descriptions/descriptor: Antarctic Peninsula (including the South Shetland Islands)
Design description: Expert collection of specimens in the field and further determination of species is the best method for determining species richness. However, the relative paucity of botanists working in Antarctica makes this approach impractical for broad-scale surveys of Antarctic floral biodiversity. Lichens are the dominant macrophytes of terrestrial Antarctica and, as such, play a fundamental part of the ice-free terrestrial ecosystem. Many distinct ice-free terrestrial habitats in the Antarctic are not represented in the current network of Antarctic protected areas. However, it is difficult to identify appropriate areas for conservation because comprehensive data on distributional patterns of Antarctic flora are not available, and existing data for most Antarctic lichen species are not compiled. Consequently, cost-effective survey methods and surrogates for the prediction of species richness are needed to accelerate assessments of local biodiversity and help select areas for conservation. A combination of a photographic “citizen scientist” approach for the collection of data, and the use of parataxonomic unit (PU) richness as a surrogate for species richness, might be a possible solution to effectively collect preliminary information and rapidly build databases on species diversity. We have developed a database and gathered photographic information on lichen occurrences for sites that are frequently visited by tourists. We test the identification capabilities with a reference dataset of Antarctic lichen images from the U.S. National Herbarium, and showed that all species used in this test can be detected, and that for 74% of the images, all classifiers were able to identify the genus of the specimen. Twenty-nine sites were photographically surveyed by researchers and tourists between 2009/10 and 2011/12 in the Antarctic Peninsula region. We estimated PU richness as a proxy for species richness for each of the 29 sites surveyed, and provide two examples of potential applications. These surveys provide preliminary information for identifying areas for protection and priorities for future research.

More detail will be available at "Understanding lichen diversity on the Antarctic Peninsula using parataxonomic units as a surrogate for species richness", data Paper accepted in Ecology.

Data published through GBIF: https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/resource?r=antarctic_peninsula_lichens

Taxonomic coverage

General taxonomic coverage description: lichens (parataxonomy)

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: Antarctic Peninsula
Coordinates: 68°50'24''S and 58°0'0''S Latitude; 73°16'48''W and 41°19'48''W Longitude 

Temporal coverage: November 10, 2011

Natural collections description

Parent collection identifier: Antarctic Site Inventory
Collection name: Antarctic Peninsula lichen photodocumentation
Collection identifier: citizen scientists
Specimen preservation method: No treatment
Curatorial unit: 1762 with an uncertainty of 0 (digital specimens (from photographs))

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Photodocumentation_of_Antarctic_Peninsula_Lichens
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://ipt.biodiversity.aq/archive.do?r=antarctic_peninsula_lichens
Publication date of data: 2019-03-19
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2013-05-13
Hierarchy level: Dataset