This project aims to reinforce the capacities of the GBIF France-led "traits” working group around the Plinian Core, in order to better manage and make species traits and other taxonomic information available at the national and international levels.
Scheduled to be submitted to Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) in June 2023, the Plinian Core is a data specification used to describe all kinds of properties or traits related to taxa, including biological and non-biological traits.
The implementation of an international standard to manage and share new species traits would be critical to ensure that species-related information is available to the widest possible audience. This is particularly relevant in the context of the European habitat restoration laws with a specific focus on plant-pollinator interactions.
The projects aims to update the French taxonomic reference list (TAXREF), a constituent of the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, with traits information and statuses for each taxon.
Aligned with the GBIF Strategic Framework, this use case of Plinian Core expands the application of GBIF-mediated data (Priority Area 1), supports policy responses and knowledge transfer around planetary change and contributes to national and global biodiversity-related goals (Priority Area 2) and adapts existing data standards to enable routine generation of increasingly complex and comprehensive biodiversity data (Priority Area 4).
Project progress
The project was officially launched by the MNHN administrative team in late November 2023, and at final reporting had successfully organized two technical workshops to gather both the French and Spanish teams involved with species traits information and how to share them. In addition, it had mapped the French Knowledge trait base to Plinian Core.
The first workshop took place in Paris in February 2024 to launch the project within the team and as well as to identify technical needs in order to begin the mapping of the French knowledge base about species traits and interactions to Plinian Core. The second workshop was held in Madrid in October 2024 to discuss Plinian Core implementation feedback from the French team working on the national traits knowledge base, and the production of a technical guide describing this use case and its conclusions.
Both workshops allowed the project’s official partners, as well as additional participants, to exchange ideas and feedback about the use of Plinian Core applied to species traits, based on the experience of the GBIF Spain team on this topic.
Post project, the French national traits database will continue to be used for sharing species traits information at the national level, as well as on GBIF.org. Other activities envisaged by the project team include continuing work towards updating the TAXREF dataset with PliC extensions on GBIF.org, having encountered delays in the validation process during implementation, and finalizing the PliC French use case technical documentation.
