The BHL-Plazi Partnership: Getting data from the 1800s directly into 21st century, reused digital accessible knowledge

Plazi is a Swiss non-governmental organization dedicated to the liberation of data imprisoned in flat, dead-end formats such as PDFs. In the process, the data therein is annotated and exported in various formats, following field-specific standards, facilitating free access and reutilization by several other service providers and end-users. This data mining and enhancement process allows for the rediscovery of the known biodiversity since the knowledge on known taxa is published into an ever-growing corpus of papers, chapters and books, inaccessible to the state-of-the-art service providers, such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The data liberated by Plazi focuses on taxonomic treatments, which carry the unit of knowledge about a taxon concept in a given publication and can be considered the building block of taxonomic science. Although these extracted taxonomic treatments can be found in Plazi’s TreatmentBank and Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR), hosted in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) digital repository Zenodo, data included in treatments (e.g., material citations and treatment citations) can also be found in other applications as well, such as Plazi’s Synospecies, Zenodeo, and GBIF. Plazi’s efforts result in more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) biodiversity literature, improving, enhancing and enabling access to data included therein as digital accessible data, otherwise almost unreachable.The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), on the other hand, provides a pivotal service by digitizing heritage literature and current literature for which BHL negotiates permission, and provides free access to otherwise inaccessible sources.In 2021, BHL and Plazi signed a Statement of Collaboration, aiming to combine the efforts of both institutions to contribute even further to FAIR-ifying biodiversity literature and data. In a collaborative demonstration project, we selected the earliest volumes and issues of the Revue Suisse de Zoologie in order to conduct a pilot study that combines the efforts of both BHL and Plazi.The corpus is composed of eight volumes (tomes), 24 issues (numbers) and 98 papers, including a total of over 5000 pages and 200 images. To process this material, BHL assigned CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to these already digitally accessible publications. Plazi created a template to be used in GoldenGate-Imagine, indicating key parameters used for tailored data mining of these articles, and customized to the journal’s graphic layout characteristics at that time. Then, we proceeded with quality control steps to provide fit-for-use data for BLR and GBIF by ensuring that the data was correctly annotated and eliminating potential data transit blockages at Plazi’s built-in data gatekeeper. The data was then subsequently reused by GBIF. Finally, we present here the summary of the obtained results, highlighting the number of key publication attributes aforementioned (pages, images), but also including a drill-down into the different taxonomic groups, countries and collections of origin of the studied material, and more. All the data is available via the Plazi statistics, the Biodiversity Literature Repository Website and community at Zenodo, the Zenodeo APIs and GBIF where the data is being reused

Atividade nictimeral e tempo de digest\ue3o de Aegla longirostri (Crustacea, Decapoda, Anomura)

O objetivo do presente trabalho foi caracterizar o ritmo de atividade e tempo de digestão em Aegla longirostri Bond-Buckup & Buckup, 1994. Os animais foram coletados em Santa Maria, RS, Brasil. Em laboratório, os animais foram transferidos para aquários individuais (5L). Para testar a atividade locomotora e alimentar dos aeglídeos um grupo de animais permaneceu sob luminosidade constante durante 12 horas, enquanto outro grupo permanecia no escuro, essa condição sendo invertida a cada 12 horas. As observações foram realizadas a cada 6 horas. Para determinar o tempo de digestão os animais foram alimentados e a cada 30 minutos um indivíduo era sacrificado. Aegla longirostri mostrou menor atividade em períodos de luminosidade, o que aconteceu nos dois grupos de animais. Essa espécie leva aproximadamente 5 horas para concluir a digestão extracelular. Os resultados sugerem que A. longirostri possui hábitos noturnos e provavelmente se alimenta sempre que há recursos disponíveis

Dynamics of gonadal development of Aegla platensis Schmitt (Decapoda, Anomura, Aeglidae)

One way to estimate gonadal development through the reproductive cycle is to observe the growth of the gonads related to the organs used to store energy. The aim of this study was to follow the gonadosomatic and hepatosomatic indexes during annual cycle of Aegla platensis Schmitt, 1942. Adult animals were collected in Taquara, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (29&deg;46'S, 50&deg;53'W). Males and females were initially weighed and dissected and had their gonads and hepatopancreas (HP) removed and weighed in order to estimate the Gonadosomatic (GI) and hepatosomatic (HI) indexes. In females, the indexes were also compared to the degree of development of the ovaries. In males the GI showed a peak of gonadal development in the autumn (p < 0.05), just when the HI showed a decrease (p < 0.05). Females showed a rise in the GI at the end of summer and beginning of autumn (p < 0.05). In females, GI values increased as the ovary matured. In A. platensis, for both males and females, the HI never showed values lower than the GI, which may indicate that these aeglids show a different pattern of energy utilization from other decapods, where as gonadal development peaks the HI decreases markedly.<br>Uma maneira de estimar o desenvolvimento gonadal ao longo do ciclo reprodutivo é observar o crescimento das gônadas em relação aos órgãos utilizados para o estoque de energia. O objetivo desse estudo foi acompanhar os índices gonadossomático e hepatossomático durante o ciclo reprodutivo de Aegla platensis Schmitt, 1942. Animais adultos foram coletados em Taquara, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil (29&deg;46'S, 50&deg;53'W). Machos e fêmeas foram pesados e dissecados, gônadas e hepatopâncreas (HP) foram retirados e pesados para obtenção dos índices gonadossomático (IG) e hepatossomático (IH). Nas fêmeas, os índices também foram comparados com o grau de desenvolvimento dos ovários. Nos machos o IG mostrou um pico de desenvolvimento gonadal no outono (p < 0,05), quando os valores do IH diminuíram (p < 0,05). Fêmeas mostraram um aumento do IG no final do verão e início do outono (p < 0,05) e os valores do IG aumentaram à medida que o ovário tornava-se maduro. Em A. platensis, tanto nos machos como nas fêmeas, os valores do IH nunca mostraram valores mais baixos que o IG, o que pode indicar que esses aeglídeos apresentam um padrão de utilização de energia diferente dos outros decápodos, onde à medida que o desenvolvimento gonadal aumenta os valores do IH diminuem marcadamente