„Ecology is a synthetic discipline benefiting from open access to data … The establishment of well-curated, federated data repositories will provide a means to preserve data while promoting attribution and acknowledgement of its use.” (Reichman et al. 2019 in Science)
In Germany the German Science Council DFG supports the set-up of a sustainable national but internationally linked infrastructure for research data (NFDI), driven by the scientific community and cross-linking pro-active consortia.
To foster access to interoperable data in biology and ecology, NFDI4BioDiversity focuses on the following six objectives:
- Promoting research data management as an integral part of biodiversity research
- Enabling FAIRness of data
- Consolidating FAIRness with quality
- Embedding NFDI4BioDiversity into the (inter-)national landscape
- Addressing NFDI-wide cross-cutting topics
- Promoting collaborative governance, viability and sustainability of data infrastructure services and science.
In Germany a considerable data stock from systematic faunistic or ecological studies on spiders in several habitat types exists, but is not readily available (beyond publication) to other researchers and further studies. This is constraining many ecological analyses on larger spatial and time scales and consequently transferability and validity.
Especially, the increasingly demanded monitoring of biodiversity in Germany (Europe) against the background of climate change and arthropod decline, is requiring a solid data basis (Milano et al. 2021).