[LTER-All-lter] looking for long-term biodiversity data (forwarded from ILTER)

[Ellison, Aaron]

I'm forwarding this on at the request of Francesca Pilotto and Peter Haase. It is as relevant to LTER as it is to ILTER.

Please respond to Francesca as appropriate (Francesca.Pilotto at senckenberg.de).

Best,
Aaron



Dear ILTER friends and colleagues,

As most of you know the decline in insect biomass that was recently published in a paper by Hallmann et al. in PlosOne (October 2017) raised enormous attention across the globe. The underlying data were compiled by hobby entomologists over approximately 30 years in different German nature reserves.
I believe you all may agree that such a decline is not restricted to nature reserves in Germany but is most likely a common pattern across several parts of the world and also not only restricted to insects. However this has to be proven.

I wonder if there might be similar long-term datasets from various ILTER sites? If so, we may compile these data and write a joined paper on cross-taxa and cross-realm patterns in global biodiversity decline?
I am aware that similar studies have been done before (e.g. Bowler et al. 2017 Nature Ecology and Evolution) but I believe that there are still many unanswered questions and many taxa groups that have never been included in such studies.

I am sure you need to know more about the planned paper project than just a draft title. However, as we currently do not know how many datasets over which time periods, from which ecosystems and countries might be available, we would rather like starting to draft an outline of such a paper after knowing what data might be available.

Therefore, I would be happy if you could let me know if you may have long-term biodiversity data from an ILTER site that fulfills the following criteria:

-         coverage of at least 15 years
-          at least 10 sampling events during that time that are evenly distributed within the 15 years
-          no changes in sampling method, taxonomic resolution and season
-          the data of a certain time series are from the same site (no space-for-time substitution!)
-          data are digitalized and could be submitted within a few weeks
-          true number abundance or biomass data on species or genus level
-          georeferences for all sites where data were sampled from

All data contributors will be offered to become co-authors.

Thank you very much!
Peter Haase
(ILTER Science Committee Chair)


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