Agenda

• brief introductions
• overview of BIEN project and current status
• review BIEN-iPlant collaboration and discuss roles/needs
• open discussion

Notes

Attendees: Brian, Mark, Jerry, Bob, Bill, Sheldon, Michael, Natalie

Discussions

• Brief introductions
• BEIN/iPlant Meeting at the Missouri Botanical Gardens late March early April. Peter Jorgensen will coordinate with Mary Margaret Sprinkle and Natalie Henriques.
• Project charter review https://pods.iplantcollaborative.org/wiki/display/iptol/BI_Project_Charter.
• Review of deliverables:

1. Generate an Americas-wide checklist of plant names and synonyms, using existing monographic and regional taxonomic information within the TROPICOS database
2. A Taxonomic Name Resolution (web) Service (TNRS) will allow multiple taxonomic perspectives to be rendered and explicitly mapped as interested data providers and taxonomists submit names for consideration. Automated and assisted taxonomic standardization will use two operations:
   1. Taxon Matching- Recover validly-published names using exact and fuzzy algorithm to check submitted names and authors against the Tropicos names database returning the canonical spelling of each name or suggestions based on available information.
3. Synonym Correction - Inspect taxonomic status of validly-published names and convert synonyms to accepted names, based on the Americas-wide checklist from (1) above.. Simple synonyms (A = B) are converted automatically and pro parte synonyms (A = B in part + C in part) are flagged for assisted inspection.
4. A Plant Observation Database (POD) which will employ the TNRS to unite georeferenced occurrence data from herbarium specimens and ecological inventories within a single model. Herbarium specimens will supply large samples of presence data needed for modeling species distributions and ranges sizes; ecological inventories will provide data on co-occurrence, diversity, and demography and traits needed to build mechanistic models of the determinants and evolution of species/clade distributions and the geography of traits.
5. An attribute database for the taxa in the checklist including distributional models, phylogenetic status, and trait information for New World plant species. For distributions we will do this by by automating existing ecological niche modeling techniques such as MaxEnt. We will also develop enhancements such as using the large sample of aggregate occurrences within the POD as a tool for distinguishing between true and false absences.
6. Several prominent science publications that focus on questions at the nexus of integrating distribution, abundance, traits, and phylogeny. As a proof of concept for the above four goals we have already outlined these manuscripts at our 2009 working group meeting.

• Meetings will be held bi-weekly.