Walter G. BerendsohnFreie Universität Berlin | FUB · Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin
Walter G. Berendsohn
Prof. Dr.
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140
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Introduction
Walter G. Berendsohn currently works at the Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin. Walter does research in Biodiversity Informatics and Botany.
Publications
Publications (140)
Virtual aggregators of organism names and taxa play a normative role in consolidating the global biodiversity information infrastructure, serving as resources for researchers worldwide. These aggregators may serve as the glue that binds together local data, ranging from individual researchers' spreadsheets to large databases containing taxonomic ch...
Linking local taxon-related information to global (or larger area) aggregators of taxonomic information is in ever growing demand. However, linking local taxon-related data to global information systems faces various obstacles. Apart from technical problems, there are specific taxonomic issues to solve. Not only do taxon names need to be matched if...
A taxonomic backbone of the Plumbaginaceae is presented and the current state of knowledge on phylogenetic relationships and taxon limits is reviewed as a basis for the accepted taxon concepts. In total, 4,476 scientific names and designations are treated of which 30 are not in the family Plumbaginaceae. The Plumbaginaceae are subdivided in three t...
Nomenclatural and taxonomic information are crucial for curating botanical collections. In the course of changing methods for systematic and taxonomic studies, classification systems changed considerably over time (Dalla Torre and Harms 1900, Durand and Bentham 1888, Endlicher 1836, Angiosperm Phylogeny Group et al. 2016). Various approaches to sto...
The World Flora Online (WFO) project (Borsch et al. 2020) was initiated in 2012 in response to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation*1, "To create an online flora of all known plants by 2020" (Wyse Jackson and Kennedy 2009). A WFO Consortium of over 40 international institutions has been formed. The World Flora Online Public Portal...
One of the tasks of the EU TETTRIs (Transforming European Taxonomy through Training, Research and Innovations) project is to document and enhance the mapping of local taxon lists (or scientific data holdings containing lists of taxon names) to global and European aggregators of scientific names and taxa. Local lists are here understood to range fro...
The World Flora Online (WFO) project was initiated in 2012 in response to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation – "To create an online flora of all known plants by 2020" (CBD 2010, Wyse Jackson 2013). A WFO Consortium of 50 international institutions and growing has been formed (see Wyse Jackson and Miller (2015) for a historical o...
With the increasing amount of interdisciplinary and international networks dedicated to long-term persistence and interoperability of research data, the demand for semantic linking of environmental research data has grown. Data related to organisms frequently inherit a major obstacle. Organisms often are ambiguously identified by using only the sci...
This data paper presents a largely phylogeny-based online taxonomic backbone for the Cactaceae compiled from literature and online sources using the tools of the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy. The data will form a contribution of the Caryophyllales Network for the World Flora Online and serve as the base for further integration of research result...
It is time to synthesize the knowledge that has been generated through more than 260 years of botanical exploration, taxonomic and, more recently, phylogenetic research throughout the world. The adoption of an updated Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) in 2011 provided the essential impetus for the development of the World Flora Online (...
Plants, fungi and algae are important components of global biodiversity and are fundamental to all ecosystems. They are the basis for human well-being, providing food, materials and medicines. Specimens of all three groups of organisms are accommodated in herbaria, where they are commonly referred to as botanical specimens.
The large number of spec...
The EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy was initially developed as part of the EU Network of Excellence project EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy, 2006-2011) aimed at a concertation of different taxonomic computing platforms applied in Europe. For example, it incorporated the ideas about taxon concept handling that were a core feature of...
For the last 15 years, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) has recognized two competing standards for organism occurrence data, ABCD (Access to Biological Collections Data; Holetschek et al. 2012) and DarwinCore (Wieczorek et al. 2012). These two representations emerged from contrasting strategies for mobilizing information about organism occ...
The International Code of Nomenclature (ICN) for algae, fungi, and plants provides for nomenclatural indexing through nomenclatural repositories (Turland et al. 2018, Art. 42). Registering nomenclatural novelties and nomenclatural acts means that repositories will keep track of names (species names and names at all ranks, replacement names, names p...
The TDWG standard ABCD (Access to Biological Collections Data task group 2007) was aimed at harmonizing terminologies used for modelling biological collection information and is used as a comprehensive data format for transferring collection and observation data between software components.
The project ABCD 3.0 (A community platform for the develop...
Herbarium specimens are central to botanical science and of rising importance thanks to increasing accessibility and broadened usability. Alongside the many new uses of specimen data, sit a range of traditional uses supporting the collection of morphological data and their application to taxonomy and systematics. (Henning et al. 2018). Technical wo...
The Platform for Cybertaxonomy (http://www.cybertaxonomy.org) is a standards-based open-source software framework covering the breadth of the taxonomic workflow, from fieldwork to publication (Ciardelli et al. 2009). It provides coupled tools for full, customized access to taxonomic data, editing and management, and collaborative team work. At the...
Herbarium specimens have always played a central role in the classical disciplines of plant sciences and the global digitisation efforts now open new horizons. To make full use of the inherent possibilities of specimen based taxonomic descriptions corresponding workflows are needed. A crucial step in the comparative analyses of organisms is the pre...
The ongoing paradigm shift in taxonomy from individual contributions to a truly collaborative and forward-looking endeavour results in a number of challenges related to distributed data management. Examination of physical specimens remains a key task, but searching for specimen data, literature, and name information is now mostly done online. In th...
The World Flora Online initiative (www.worldfloraonline.org) is a global consortium of many of the world’s leading botanical institutions with the aim to offer a worldwide information resource for plant information (Miller 2019). It aggregates information provided by the botanical community, either through specialized information systems or publish...
On September 17-23 2018, the Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México hosted the Caryophyllales 2018 conference. Three members of the Institute acted as local organizers, but an expanded organizing and scientific committee included ten other institutions representing countries from Europe, Africa, Asia, and America. [see PDF f...
The Caryophyllales Network strives to assemble an online dynamic synthesis of the order Caryophyllales, uniting the current knowledge about the phylogeny of the order with up-to-date information on the individual taxa contained. Capturing taxonomic data and the decision processes involved in the definition and circumscription of the taxa requires h...
Over the past years, herbarium collections worldwide have started to digitize millions of specimens on an industrial scale. Although the imaging costs are steadily falling, capturing the accompanying label information is still predominantly done manually and develops into the principal cost factor. In order to streamline the process of capturing he...
On herbarium sheets, data elements such as plant name, collection site, collector, barcode and accession number are found mostly on labels glued to the sheet. The data are thus visible on specimen images. With continuously improving technologies for collection mass-digitisation it has become easier and easier to produce high quality images of herba...
A simple, permanent and reliable specimen identifier system is needed to take the informatics of collections into a new era of interoperability. A system of identifiers based on HTTP URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers), endorsed by the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), has now been rolled out to 14 member organisations (Güntsch et...
Herbarium specimens have always played a central role in plant sciences and constitute the cornerstone for systematics and taxonomy. This role is further strengthened with the ongoing digitisation and growing online-availability of collections all over the globe. The increasing usability of specimens demands, however, an improved use and sustainabl...
The GGBN Data Portal (http://www.ggbn.org, Droege et al. 2014) has established standardised data flows for genomic DNA samples, including voucher specimens, tissue samples, DNA samples as well as resulting sequences and publications. Dealing with different types of DNA (aDNA, gDNA, eDNA) is essential and closely related to user-friendly search and...
One of the major design features of the Common Data Model (CDM) is the ability to store and handle taxonomic concepts (a.k.a. “potential taxa” -Berendsohn 1995 , “taxonyme” - Koperski et al. 2000, "Assertions" - Pyle 2004, "taxonomic entities" -Kennedy et al. 2005 “taxon circumscriptions”, etc.).
A major driver of the critical appreciation of the...
The EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy has come a long way towards providing a complete, standards-based and reliable set of tools and services supporting the taxonomic workflow (Ciardelli et al. 2009). The Platform is firmly grounded in the organisational structure of the BGBM, with several positions directly dedicated to maintenance and further deve...
Specimens form the falsifiable evidence used in plant systematics. Derivatives of specimens (including the specimen as the organism in the field) such as tissue and DNA samples play an increasing role in research. The EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy is a specialist's tool that allows to document and sustainably store all data that are used in the t...
The EDIT Common Data Model (CDM) (FUB, BGBM 2008) is the centrepiece of the EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy (FUB, BGBM 2011, Ciardelli et al. 2009). Building on modelling efforts reaching back to the 1990ies, it aims to combine existing standards relevant to the taxonomic domain (but often designed for data exchange) with requirements of modern tax...
The Platform for Cybertaxonomy (FUB, BGBM 2011) is an open-source software framework covering the full breadth of the taxonomic workflow, from fieldwork to data publication. It provides a set of tools for editing and management of taxonomic data (individually or collaboratively), fully customizable on-line access to that data, and other means of da...
The EDIT Platform for Cybertaxonomy is a standards based suite of software components supporting the taxonomic research workflow from field work to publication in journals and dynamic web portals (FUB, BGBM 2011). The underlying Common Data Model (CDM) covers the main biodiversity informatics foci such as names, classifications, descriptions, liter...
AnnoSys (Tschöpe et al. 2013, Suhrbier et al. 2017) is a web-based open-source system for correcting and enriching biodiversity data in publicly available data portals. Users are enabled to annotate specimen data, and these annotations become visible to researchers who subsequently observe the annotated specimen. The AnnoSys search and subscription...
Access to AnnoSys from your portal makes it possible to (1) annotate and to (2) show existing annotations for specimen data records. To this end, weblinks from the page displaying the individual specimen record to AnnoSys are incorporated into your website.
In the current (XML-based) system, the portal should provide a link called "annotate" or sim...
AnnoSys is a web-based open-source information system that enables users to correct and enrich specimen data published in data portals, thus enhancing data quality and documenting research developments over time. This brings the traditional annotation workflows for specimens to the Internet, as annotations become visible to researchers who subseque...
Biological research collections holding billions of specimens world-wide provide the most important baseline information for systematic biodiversity research. Increasingly, specimen data records become available in virtual herbaria and data portals. The traditional (physical) annotation procedure fails here, so that an important pathway of research...
Biological research collections holding billions of specimens world-wide provide the most important baseline information for systematic biodiversity research. Increasingly, specimen data records become available in virtual herbaria and data portals. The traditional (physical) annotation procedure fails here, so that an important pathway of research...
Describing a tool for managing taxonomic concepts and their relations in the case of Red Lists of endangered species
Millions of specimens housed in collections of natural history institutions document our planet’s biodiversity over centuries and represent both an indispensable knowledge base for today’s biological research as well as a cultural heritage. Digitization efforts of the past years have produced a substantial amount of digital assets: high-resolution...
Genomic samples of non-model organisms are becoming increasingly important in a broad range of studies from developmental biology, biodiversity analyses, to conservation. Genomic sample definition, description, quality, voucher information and metadata all need to be digitized and disseminated across scientific communities. This information needs t...
Europe is building its Open Science Cloud; a set of robust and interoperable e-infrastructures with the capacity to provide data and computational solutions through cloud-based services. The development and sustainable operation of such e-infrastructures are at the forefront of European funding priorities. The research community, however, is still...
La obra consiste de 3 tomos publicados entre 2009 y 2016. Las familias están arregladas en orden alfabético dentro de los grupos de angiospermas, gimnospermas y pteridofitas; además de 408 dibujos originales distribuidos entre los tomos.
El listado anotado de árboles y especies arborescentes se basa en actividades de recolectas de muestras botánic...
More than 15 years after the start, the Euro+Med PlantBase project (E+M), which aimed at providing a comprehensive, dynamic and permanently updated online checklist of all vascular plants for Europe and the Mediterranean countries, is now very close to full coverage. E+M is the most detailed resource on plant biodiversity in the Euro-Mediterranean...
The Caryophyllales 2015 conference was held at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, 13–18 September 2015. The conference aimed at fomenting and expanding the international
Caryophyllales network, bringing together researchers from all over
the world and initiating new collaborations. More than 80 colleagues
from 18 countries participated...
OUT OF STORAGE - ONTO THE WEB
OPENING UP NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS TO THE PUBLIC VIA EUROPEANA
Gisela Baumann, Wolf-Henning Kusber, Jörg Holetschek, Anton Güntsch, Walter G. Berendsohn
Freie Universität Berlin, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem
Corresponding author: g.baumann@bgbm.org
Natural history institutions increasingly...
Unlabelled:
We present the model and implementation of a workflow that blazes a trail in systematic biology for the re-usability of character data (data on any kind of characters of pheno- and genotypes of organisms) and their additivity from specimen to taxon level. We take into account that any taxon characterization is based on a limited set of...
Background:
Reliable taxonomy underpins communication in all of biology, not least nature conservation and sustainable use of ecosystem resources. The flexibility of taxonomic interpretations, however, presents a serious challenge for end-users of taxonomic concepts. Users need standardised and continuously harmonised taxonomic reference systems,...
The Caryophyllales constitute a major lineage of flowering plants with approximately 12500 species in 39 families. A taxonomic backbone at the genus level is provided that reflects the current state of knowledge and accepts 749 genera for the order. A detailed review of the literature of the past two decades shows that enormous progress has been ma...
One of the major goals of systematics is to provide a synthesis of knowledge on the diversity of a group of organisms, such as flowering plants. Biodiversity conservation and management call for rapid and accurate global assessments at the species level. At the same time the rapid development of evolutionary biology with a spectrum of approaches to...
Europeana verknüpft digitale Objekte aus europäischen Museen, Bibliotheken und Archiven, um sie für verschiedenste Nutzergruppen zu erschließen. Die Zentraleinrichtung Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem (BGBM) ist verantwortlich für die Anbindung biologischer Sammlungsdaten mithilfe des Open Up!-Workflows und des Biological Col...
In vitro antiplasmodial activities of extracts from Albizia saman, Fabaceae, Calea tenuifolia (C. zacatechichi), Asteraceae, Hymenaea courbaril, Fabaceae, Jatropha curcas, Euphorbiaceae, Momordica charantia, Cucurbitaceae, and Moringa oleifera, Moringaceae were evaluated. From the lipophilic extract of C tenuifolia five active flavones were obtaine...
Biological specimens in research collections provide the most important baseline information for systematic research. Traditionally, they are annotated by experts in written form, which remains directly associated with the specimens. These annotations, defined as data added at a later stage to the original data, provide an important quality control...
Biodiversity informatics plays a central enabling role in the research community's efforts to address scientific conservation and sustainability issues. Great strides have been made in the past decade establishing a framework for sharing data, where taxonomy and systematics has been perceived as the most prominent discipline involved. To some exten...
i4Life provides linkages between the Catalogue of Life, an expert based knowledge portal for living species on earth, and global partners (IUCN, GBIF, ENA at EBI, BOLD, EoL, and Life Watch) providing data portals for distribution, genetic diversity and conservation information. This novel e-infrastructure offers the only single global consensus lis...
Scientists should ensure that high quality research information is readily available on the Internet so society is not dependant on less authoritative sources. Many scientific projects and initiatives publish information on species and biodiversity on the World Wide Web without users needing to pay for it. However, these resources often stagnate wh...
The 11th edition of the conference series „Culture and Computer Science“ brings into focus best practice examples, challenges, and future trends in the fields of visualization and interaction.
The contributions collected in this volume disclose multifaceted approaches towards the topic “culture and computer science” and analyse, demonstrate and di...
Biodiversity data generated in the context of research projects often lack a strategy for long-term preservation and availability, and are therefore at risk of becoming outdated and finally lost. The reBiND project aims to develop an efficient and well-documented workflow for rescuing such data sets. The workflow consists of phases for data transfo...
Biodiversity informatics has experienced tremendous developments in the last 15 years. There are now comprehensive online checklists for plant taxa as well as many large plant-taxon related databases, including the vegetation-plot databases registered in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD; http://www.givd.info). However, efficient...
Multimedia data held by Natural History Museums and Universities are presently not readily accessible, even within the natural history community itself. The EU project OpenUp! is an effort to mobilise scientific biological multimedia resources and open them to a wider audience using the EUROPEANA data standards and portal. The connection between na...
Biodiversity informatics has experienced tremendous developments in the last 15 years. There are now comprehensive online checklists for plant taxa as well as many large plant-taxon related databases, including the vegetation-plot databases registered in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD; http://www.givd.info). However, efficient...
Within the context of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the Biological Collections Access Service (BioCASe) has been set up to foment data provision by natural history content providers. Products include the BioCASe Protocol and the PyWrapper software, a web service allowing to access rich natural history data using complex schem...
Based on collection activities over the past 25 years, a revision of literature, and unpublished materials, an annotated checklist of trees and arborescent species found in and reported from El Salvador, Central America is presented. This is the second of three volumes covering 29 angiosperm plant families (Magnoliaceae to Punicaceae, and Achatocar...
One of the most serious bottlenecks in the scientific workflows of biodiversity sciences is the need to integrate data from different sources, software applications, and services for analysis, visualisation and publication. For more than a quarter of a century the TDWG Biodiversity Information Standards organisation has a central role in defining a...
The Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a suite of copyright-based licenses defining terms for the distribution and re-use of creative works. CC provides licenses for different use cases and includes open content licenses such as the Attribution license (CC BY, used by many Open Access scientific publishers) and the Attribution Share Alike license (...
Naturally occurring compounds that promote energy expenditure and delay aging in model organisms may be of signifi cant interest, since these substances potentially provide pharmaceutical approaches to tackle obesity and promote healthy lifespan in humans. We aimed to test whether pharmaceutical concentrations of glaucarubinone, a cytotoxic and ant...