Thematic Network Soil Zoology

German

Thematic Networks represent a basis for the use of biodiversity data and metadata and can be considered an expansion of the knot structure of GBIF Germany. They focus not only on taxa and their systematics, but also on the occurrence of various organism groups and their interactions within the species community of a specific habitat type.

The ecologically relevant conditions of a specific biotope or habitat type at a specified time period (i.e., pH value, nutrient concentrations, temperature etc.) are similar or equal for all species occurring there. Thematic Networks thus correlate biodiversity data of different organism groups within a specific habitat type, their spatio-temporal heterogeneity and these with abiotic factors s.l. The consolidation of such taxonomic ecological information as well as developing a data repository of species communities and their relationships to their environment represents the potential of thematic networks.

Thematic Networks are not only applicable for soil zoology, but can be established for all other ecosystem types with spatio-temporal correlations between organisms of various taxa and physical-chemical habitat parameters, e.g., plankton or macrobethos communities. Such networks combine expert-based knowledge on the biodiversity of diverse sites. They guarantee the compilation of the large quantities of organism-based information necessary for the use and application of knowledge from biodiversity research, provide a sustainable repository for this data and make them together with assessment tools available over long time periods for various research questions and evaluations.

The Thematic Network Soil Zoology can thus be simply the first in a series of potential Networks within GBIF Germany.

Coordination:

The development of the Thematic Network Soil Zoology has been financially sponsored since August 1, 2013 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the cooperative project “Edaphobase Information System: Data Repository, Data Infrastructure and Service Platform for Soil Zoology” (FKZ 01LI1301A).