B S S Blediversy Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 8: e141109
shui doi: 10.3897/biss.8.141109

Conference Abstract

Collectively Working towards Plant-Pollinator
Interactions Data Interoperability and Reuse:
Lessons Learned from the WorldFAIR Project

Debora P Drucker?, José Augusto Salim§, Jorrit Poelen!, Filipi Miranda Soares*"

+ Embrapa Digital Agriculture, Campinas, Brazil

§ Universidade de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

| UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America
4 Ronin Institute, Montclair, NJ, United States of America

# Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

a University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands

Corresponding author: Debora P Drucker (debora.drucker@embrapa.br)

Received: 05 Nov 2024 | Published: 06 Nov 2024

Citation: Drucker D, Salim J, Poelen J, Soares F (2024) Collectively Working towards Plant-Pollinator
Interactions Data Interoperability and Reuse: Lessons Learned from the WorldFAIR Project. Biodiversity
Information Science and Standards 8: e141109. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.8.141109

Abstract

The WorldFAIR project worked with eleven case studies to advance the implementation
of the FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable;
Wilkinson et al. 2016). The Case Study on Agricultural Biodiversity (Drucker et al. 2022)
addressed the challenges of advancing interoperability and mobilizing plant-pollinator
interaction data for reuse. In the first phase of the project we performed a landscape
analysis and found that a significant amount of data on plant-pollinator interaction was
available as supplementary files of research articles, in a range of formats such as PDFs,
Excel® spreadsheets, and text files. The diversity of approaches and the lack of
appropriate data vocabularies led to confusion, information loss, and the need for
complex data interpretation and transformation.

In the second phase of the project, we performed six studies to adopt standards
recommended in the first phase. Our approach for plant-pollinator data standardization
was based on Darwin Core (Darwin Core Task Group 2009) and Ecological Data
Language (EML, Jones et al. 2019), in conjunction with a data model and vocabulary

© Drucker D etal. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC
BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited.

2 Drucker D et al

proposed by the Brazilian Network of Plant-Pollinator Interactions (REBIPP). The studies

underwent a process of “FAIRification” (i.e., transforming data into a format that adheres
to the FAIR data principles) using the Global Biotic Interactions (GIoBI, Poelen et al. 2014
) platform. Two studies also explored the publishing model for Biotic Interactions as part
of the GBIF New Data Model.

The standardization strategy was successful and increased the interoperability of plant-
pollinator interaction data, resulting in a process that allows tracking the provenance of
the data, as well as facilitates the reuse of datasets (Drucker et al. 2024). This effort led to
the development of "FAIR best practices" and guidelines for sharing plant-pollinator
interaction data, as well as a FAIR assessment tool designed to help researchers and
institutions evaluate adherence to the FAIR principles (Drucker et al. 2024). A tutorial to
standardize plant-pollinator datasets (Gonzalez-Vaquero et al. 2024) and a cookbook
with guidelines and recommendations for publishing agriculture-related plant-pollinator
data (Salim et al. 2024) were developed to help different actors standardize plant-
pollinator interaction data in accordance with the FAIR principles.

Moving from diverse approaches and siloed initiatives to widely available FAIR plant-
pollination interaction data for scientists and decision-makers will enable the
development of integrative studies that enhance our understanding of species biology,
behavior, ecology, phenology, and evolution.

Keywords

FAIR, agriculture, ecosystem services, community, data sharing

Presenting author

Debora P Drucker

Presented at

SPNHC-TDWG 2024

Grant title

‘Global cooperation on FAIR data policy and practice’ (WorldFAIR) has received funding
from the European Union’s Horizon Europe project call HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-
ERA-01-01, grant agreement 101058393. SURPASS2 project FAPESP: 2018/14994-1

Conflicts of interest

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Collectively Working towards Plant-Pollinator Interactions Data Interoperability ... 3

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