Collaborative Research: ABI Innovation: FuTRES, an Ontology-Based Functional Trait Resource for Paleo- and Neo-biologists

合作研究：ABI 创新：FuTRES，为古生物学家和新生物学家提供的基于本体的功能性状资源

基本信息

批准号：
1759898
负责人：
Robert Guralnick
金额：
$ 28.65万
依托单位：
University of Florida
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-06-01 至 2023-05-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1759898&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Collaborative Research ABI Innovation FuTRES

项目摘要

Physical characteristics of animals can help determine which ones survive and flourish, especially in a changing environment. These characteristics, also known as functional traits, include features such as length, height, shape, weight, growth rate, sex, and reproductive state. Studying these traits provides insights into how communities of different types of animals come together and how species and communities respond to changes in their environment over time, which is critical for conservation efforts. However, very little information about functional traits is available, and what is available is difficult to combine with other data. How these traits are influenced by environmental changes - such as climate change, pollution, urbanization and human predation - and how they shift over longer timescales are poorly understood, and the need for this information is outstripping the speed with which scientists can collect these data. Digitized collections of animals representing life from the past two million years contain a treasure trove of information about these individuals' functional traits, but these data are stored in multiple places and in different formats. Researchers may have recorded dates differently, for example, or used a variety of terms to describe a single physical feature. Making these data widely available in standardized formats could help scientists study changes in functional traits through time, linking their observations of traits of modern animals to those from fossil and archaeological records. The Functional Trait Resource for Environmental Studies (FuTRES) project will gather trait data from digitized records; to engage communities of researchers to make these data available, standardized, and useable; and to develop a more complete workflow for using these data in research. Functional trait data have revolutionized ecology and are transforming paleontology, but acquiring them requires extensive labor, not only in measuring traits but in managing and communicating the resulting data. When trait data are lacking, researchers substitute average values, or other characteristics like behavioral or dietary categories. These substitutes - assigned at the species level - obscure intraspecific changes in traits. FuTRES fills the clear need for informatics tools that give researchers access to existing trait data and a place to store new data as they are generated. FuTRES is assembling a varied collection of existing trait data, building a pipeline that converts data to an integrated, semantically enriched form, and developing an Application Programming Interface (API) and web platform to serve the data. One of the key innovations of FuTRES is the use of ontologies, an information science approach that creates computer-readable definitions of traits and describes the interrelationships of traits, organisms, collecting events, and other entities. In this way, FuTRES will make functional trait data searchable through reference to time, space, and vertebrate anatomy. FuTRES will also provide access to trait data via popular data portals (e.g., VertNet) and software such as R, opening the data to scientists in biodiversity and other domains. The toolkit will be tested with mammalian use cases that leverage the massive scale of the unlocked data. In sum, newly created access mechanisms and tools will provide novel approaches for analyses of trait variation across space and time, providing researchers in disparate fields discovery capabilities for relevant data that would otherwise have been invisible to them.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

动物的身体特征可以帮助确定哪些生存和蓬勃发展，尤其是在不断变化的环境中。这些特征（也称为功能性状）包括长度，身高，形状，体重，生长速率，性别和生殖状态等特征。研究这些特征提供了有关不同类型动物的社区如何聚在一起以及物种和社区如何随着时间的推移对环境变化的反应，这对于保护工作至关重要。但是，关于功能性状的信息很少，并且很难与其他数据相结合。这些特征如何受到环境变化的影响 - 例如气候变化，污染，城市化和人类捕食 - 以及它们如何在更长的时间尺度上转移，并且对这些信息的需求远远超过了科学家可以收集这些数据的速度。代表过去两百万年生命的动物的数字化收集包含有关这些人功能性状的宝库，但这些数据以多个位置和不同的格式存储。例如，研究人员可能以不同的方式记录日期，或者使用各种术语来描述单个物理特征。以标准化格式广泛使用这些数据可以帮助科学家研究功能性状的变化，从而将它们对现代动物的特征的观察到与化石和考古记录的观察联系起来。环境研究的功能性状资源（FUTRES）项目将从数字化记录中收集性状数据；吸引研究人员社区以使这些数据可用，标准化和可用；并开发一个更完整的工作流程，用于在研究中使用这些数据。功能性状数据彻底改变了生态学，正在改变古生物学，但是获得它们需要广泛的劳动，不仅在衡量特征，而且还需要管理和传达所得数据。当缺乏性状数据时，研究人员将替代平均值或其他特征，例如行为或饮食类别。这些替代品 - 分配在物种水平上 - 掩盖了性状的种内变化。 FUTRES满足了信息学工具的明确需求，这些工具使研究人员可以访问现有的性状数据，并在生成新数据的地方存储新数据。 Futres正在组装各种现有特质数据的集合，建立了将数据转换为集成，语义丰富的表单，并开发应用程序编程接口（API）和Web平台以服务数据的管道。 FUTRES的关键创新之一是使用本体，一种信息科学方法，该方法可以创建计算机可读的特征定义，并描述特质，生物，收集事件和其他实体的相互关系。这样，FUTRES将通过引用时间，空间和脊椎动物解剖结构来使功能性状数据可搜索。 FUTRES还将通过流行的数据门户（例如Vertnet）和诸如R之类的软件提供对性状数据的访问，并向生物多样性和其他域中的科学家打开数据。该工具包将使用哺乳动物用例进行测试，以利用未锁定数据的大规模尺度。 In sum, newly created access mechanisms and tools will provide novel approaches for analyses of trait variation across space and time, providing researchers in disparate fields discovery capabilities for relevant data that would otherwise have been invisible to them.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.