BRASIL
BRASIL
Abstract:
Biological collections have been historically regarded as fundamental
sources of scientific information on biodiversity. They are commonly
associated with a variety of biases, which must be characterized and
mitigated before data can be consumed. In this work, we are motivated by
taxonomic and collector biases, which can be understood as the effect
of particular recording preferences of key collectors on shaping the
overall taxonomic composition of biological collections they contribute
to. In this context, we propose two network models as the first steps
towards a network-based conceptual framework for understanding the
formation of biological collections as a result of the composition of
collectors’ interests and activities. Building upon the defined network
models, we present a case study in which we use our models to explore
the community of collectors and the taxonomic composition of the
University of Brasília herbarium. We describe topological features of
the networks and point out some of the most relevant collectors in the
biological collection as well as their taxonomic groups of interest. We
also investigate their collaborative behaviour while recording
specimens. Finally, we discuss future perspectives for incorporating
temporal and geographical dimensions to the models. Moreover, we
indicate some possible investigation directions that could benefit from
our approach based on social network analytics to model and analyse
biological collections.
