A Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found in globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023

by Nomer and Elton, two naive review bots

review@globalbioticinteractions.org

https://globalbioticinteractions.org/contribute

https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023/issues

2024-02-10

Abstract

Life on Earth is sustained by complex interactions between organisms and their environment. These biotic interactions can be captured in datasets and published digitally. We describe a review process of such an openly accessible digital interactions dataset of known origin, and discuss their outcome. The dataset under review (aka globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023) has size 103KiB and contains 13 interactions with 1 unique types of associations (e.g., flowersVisitedBy) between 1 primary taxa (e.g., Citrus) and 10 associated taxa (e.g., Diptera). The report includes detailed summaries of interactions data as well as a taxonomic review from multiple perspectives.

Introduction

Data Review

Data review can be a time consuming process, especially when done manually. This review report aims to help facilitate data review of species interaction claims made in datasets registered with Global Biotic Interactions (Poelen, Simons, and Mungall 2014). The review includes summary statistics of, and observations about, the dataset under review:

Orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osbeck, var. Pera-rio) insect floral visiting data of orchards in Itaberaí, Goiás, Brasil. file:///home/runner/work/ferreira2023/ferreira2023/./

For additional metadata related to this dataset, please visit https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023 and inspect associated metadata files including, but not limited to, README.md, eml.xml, and/or globi.json.

Methods

The review is performed through programmatic scripts that leverage tools like Preston, Elton, Nomer combined with third-party tools like grep, mlr, tail and head.

Tools used in this review process
tool name version
elton 0.13.2
nomer 0.5.6
mlr 6.0.0
pandoc 3.1.6.1

The review process can be described in the form of the script below 1.

# get versioned copy of the dataset (size approx.  103KiB) under review 
elton pull globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023

# generate review notes
elton review globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023\
 > review.tsv

# export indexed interaction records
elton interactions globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023\
 > interactions.tsv

# export names and align them with the Catalogue of Life using Nomer 
elton names globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023\
 | nomer append col\
 > name-alignment.tsv

or visually, in a process diagram.

review origin dataset origin elton Elton (a naive review bot) elton->origin pull (1) interactions indexed interactions elton->interactions generates (2) alignment name alignments nomer Nomer (a naive review bot) nomer->interactions extract names (3) nomer->alignment generates (5) catalog name catalog nomer->catalog uses (4)

You can find a recent copy of the full review script at check-data.sh.

Results

In the following sections, the results of the review are summarized 2. Then, links to the detailed review reports are provided.

Biotic Interactions

model primaryTaxon Primary Taxon associatedTaxon Associated Taxon primaryOrganism Primary Organism primaryOrganism->primaryTaxon classifiedAs associatedOrganism Associated Organism primaryOrganism->associatedOrganism interactsWith associatedOrganism->associatedTaxon classifiedAs

In this review, biotic interactions (or biotic associations) are modeled as a primary (aka subject, source) organism interacting with an associate (aka object, target) organism. The dataset under review classified the primary/associate organisms with specific taxa. The primary and associate organisms The kind of interaction is documented as an interaction type.

The dataset under review (aka globalbioticinteractions/ferreira2023) has size 103KiB and contains 13 interactions with 1 unique types of associations (e.g., flowersVisitedBy) between 1 primary taxa (e.g., Citrus) and 10 associated taxa (e.g., Diptera).

An exhaustive list of indexed interaction claims can be found in csv and tsv archives. To facilitate discovery, the first 500 claims available on the html page at indexed-interactions.html are shown below.

The exhaustive list was used to create the following data summaries below.

Sample of Indexed Interaction Claims
sourceTaxonName interactionTypeName targetTaxonName referenceCitation
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Diptera interactions.tsv
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Apis interactions.tsv
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Apis interactions.tsv
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Apis interactions.tsv
Most Frequently Mentioned Interaction Types (up to 20 most frequent)
interactionTypeName count
flowersVisitedBy 58
Most Frequently Mentioned Primary Taxa (up to 20 most frequent)
sourceTaxonName count
Citrus 58
Most Frequently Mentioned Associate Taxa (up to 20 most frequent)
targetTaxonName count
Diptera 17
Trigona spinipes 12
Apis mellifera 9
Hymenoptera 6
Apis 5
Paratrigona lineata 3
Lepidoptera 2
Plebeia 2
Insecta 1
Tetragona clavipes 1
Most Frequent Interactions between Primary and Associate Taxa (up to 20 most frequent)
sourceTaxonName interactionTypeName targetTaxonName count
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Diptera 17
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Trigona spinipes 12
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Apis mellifera 9
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Hymenoptera 6
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Apis 5
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Paratrigona lineata 3
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Lepidoptera 2
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Plebeia 2
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Insecta 1
Citrus flowersVisitedBy Tetragona clavipes 1

Interaction Networks

The figures below provide a graph view on the dataset under review. The first shows a summary network on the kingdom level, and the second shows how interactions on the family level. Note that both network graphs were first aligned taxonomically via the Catalogue of Life. Please refer to the original (or verbatim) taxonomic names for a more original view on the interaction data.

interactions Plantae Plantae Plantae->Plantae Animalia Animalia Plantae->Animalia
interactions Rutaceae Rutaceae Apidae Apidae Rutaceae->Apidae Saxifragaceae Saxifragaceae Rutaceae->Saxifragaceae

You can download the indexed dataset under review at indexed-interactions.csv. A tab-separated file can be found at indexed-interactions.tsv

Learn more about the structure of this download at GloBI website, by opening a GitHub issue, or by sending an email.

Another way to discover the dataset under review is by searching for it on the GloBI website.

Taxonomic Alignment

As part of the review, all names are aligned against various name catalogs (e.g., col, ncbi, discoverlife, gbif, itis, globi, mdd, tpt, and pbdb). These alignments may serve as a way to review name usage or aid in selecting of a suitable taxonomic name resource to use.

Sample of Name Alignments
providedName relationName resolvedCatalogName resolvedName
Apis HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME col Apis
Apis mellifera HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME col Apis mellifera
Citrus HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME col Citrus
Diptera SYNONYM_OF col Saxifraga
Distribution of Taxonomic Ranks of Aligned Names by Catalog. Names that were not aligned with a catalog are counted as NAs. So, the total number of unaligned names for a catalog will be listed in their NA row.
resolvedCatalogName resolvedRank count
tpt NA 10
tpt species 1
pbdb genus 3
pbdb order 3
pbdb NA 3
pbdb species 1
pbdb class 1
ncbi species 4
ncbi genus 3
ncbi order 3
ncbi class 1
mdd NA 11
itis species 4
itis genus 3
itis order 3
itis class 1
globi NA 6
globi genus 5
globi species 4
globi order 3
globi class 1
globi phylum 1
gbif genus 4
gbif species 4
gbif order 3
gbif class 1
discoverlife NA 7
discoverlife species 4
col genus 4
col species 4
col order 3
col class 1
Name relationship types per catalog. Name relationship type “NONE” means that a name was not recognized by the associated catalog. “SAME_AS” indicates either a “HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME” or “SYNONYM_OF” name relationship type. We recognize that “SYNONYM_OF” encompasses many types of nomenclatural synonymies (ICZN 1999) (e.g., junior synonym, senior synonyms).
resolvedCatalogName relationName count
col HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 11
col SYNONYM_OF 1
discoverlife NONE 7
discoverlife HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 4
gbif HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 12
gbif SYNONYM_OF 1
globi SAME_AS 148
itis HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 11
mdd NONE 11
ncbi SAME_AS 11
pbdb HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 8
pbdb SYNONYM_OF 1
pbdb NONE 3
tpt NONE 10
tpt HAS_ACCEPTED_NAME 1
List of Available Name Alignment Reports
catalog name alignment results
col associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
ncbi associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
discoverlife associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
gbif associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
itis associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
globi associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
mdd associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
tpt associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)
pbdb associated names alignments (first 500, full csv/tsv)

Additional Reviews

Elton, Nomer, and other tools may have difficulties interpreting existing species interaction datasets. Or, they may misbehave, or otherwise show unexpected behavior. As part of the review process, detailed review notes are kept that document possibly misbehaving, or confused, review bots. An sample of review notes associated with this review can be found below.

First few lines in the review notes.
reviewDate reviewCommentType reviewComment
2024-02-10T19:29:06Z note found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,06618,-49,77326)]
2024-02-10T19:29:06Z note found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,06618,-49,77326)]
2024-02-10T19:29:06Z note found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,06618,-49,77326)]
2024-02-10T19:29:06Z note found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,06618,-49,77326)]

In addtion, you can find the most frequently occurring notes in the table below.

Most frequently occurring review notes, if any.
reviewComment count
found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,06618,-49,77326)] 34
found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,01645,-49,98505)] 13
found invalid location: [invalid (latitude, longitude) = (-16,07233,-49,95806)] 11

For addition information on review notes, please have a look at the first 500 Review Notes or the download full csv or tsv archives.

GloBI Review Badge

As part of the review, a review badge is generated. This review badge can be included in webpages to indicate the review status of the dataset under review.

review review 💬 💬

Note that if the badge is green, no review notes were generated. If the badge is yellow, the review bots may need some help with interpreting the species interaction data.

GloBI Index Badge

If the dataset under review has been registered with GloBI, and has been succesfully indexed by GloBI, the GloBI Index Status Badge will turn green. This means that the dataset under review was indexed by GloBI and is available through GloBI services and derived data products.

Sample of a GloBI Index Badge

If you’d like to keep track of reviews or index status of the dataset under review, please visit GloBI’s dataset index 5 for badge examples.

Discussion

This review is intended to provide a perspective on the dataset to aid understanding of species interaction claims discovered. However, this review should not be considered as fitness of use or other kind of quality assessment. Instead, the review may be used as in indication of the open-ness6 and FAIRness (Wilkinson et al. 2016; Trekels et al. 2023) of the dataset: in order to perform this review, the data was likely openly available, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Currently, this Open-FAIR assessment is qualitative, and with measurement units specified, a more quantitative approach can be implemented.

This report also showcases the reuse of machine-actionable (meta)data, something highly recommended by the FAIR Data Principles (Wilkinson et al. 2016). Making (meta)data machine-actionable means that it can be more precisely processed by computers, enabling even naive review bots like Nomer and Elton to interpret the data effectively. This capability is crucial for not just automating the generation of reports, but also to facilitate seamless data exchanges, i.e., interoperability.

Acknowledgements

We thank the many humans that created us and those who created and maintained the data, software and other intellectual resources that were used for producing this review. In addition, we are grateful for the natural resources providing the basis for these human and bot activities.

References

ICZN. 1999. “International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.” The International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, London, UK. https://www.iczn.org/the-code/the-code-online/.
Poelen, Jorrit H., James D. Simons, and Chris J. Mungall. 2014. “Global Biotic Interactions: An Open Infrastructure to Share and Analyze Species-Interaction Datasets.” Ecological Informatics 24 (November): 148–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.08.005.
Trekels, Maarten, Debora Pignatari Drucker, José Augusto Salim, Jeff Ollerton, Jorrit Poelen, Filipi Miranda Soares, Max Rünzel, Muo Kasina, Quentin Groom, and Mariano Devoto. 2023. WorldFAIR Project (D10.1) Agriculture-related pollinator data standards use cases report.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8176978.
Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.