Biodiversidata: An Open-Access Biodiversity Database for Uruguay

By

Grattarola, Florencia
Botto, Germán
Rosa, Inés da
Gobel, Noelia
González, Enrique
González, Javier
Hernández, Daniel
Laufer, Gabriel
Maneyro, Raúl
Martínez-Lanfranco, Juan
Naya, Daniel
Rodales, Ana
Ziegler, Lucía
Pincheira-Donoso, Daniel

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2019-06-20

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

7

Pages

1--18

Subjects

Amphibia , Aves , Biodiversity , mammalia , Reptilia , species occurrence records , Tetrapods , Uruguay

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.7.e36226
eLocator: e36226

 

Abstract

The continental and marine territories of Uruguay are characterised by a rich convergence of multiple biogeographic ecoregions of the Neotropics, making this country a peculiar biodiversity spot. However, despite the biological significance of Uruguay for the South American subcontinent, the distribution of biodiversity patterns in this country remain poorly understood, given the severe gaps in available records of geographic species distributions. Currently, national biodiversity datasets are not openly available and, thus, a dominant proportion of the primary biodiversity data produced by researchers and institutions across Uruguay remains highly dispersed and difficult to access for the wider scientific and environmental community. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by developing the first comprehensive, open-access database of biodiversity records for Uruguay (Biodiversidata), which is the result of a large-scale collaboration involving experts working across the entire range of taxonomic diversity found in the country.As part of the first phase of Biodiversidata, we here present a comprehensive database of tetrapod occurrence records native from Uruguay, with the latest taxonomic updates. The database provides primary biodiversity data on extant Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves and Mammalia species recorded within the country. The total number of records collated is 69,380, spanning 673 species and it is available at the Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2650169. This is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically comprehensive database of Uruguayan tetrapod species available to date and it represents the first open repository for the country.