Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: THAINÁ LESSA PONTES SILVA

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : THAINÁ LESSA PONTES SILVA
DATE: 06/04/2023
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: Videoconferência – Plataforma Google Meet
TITLE:

Biases and shortfalls in publicly available knowledge of Namibia's terrestrial biodiversity

KEY WORDS:

GBIF, occurrence records, survey effort, ignorance scores, species distributions, vertebrates, Southern Africa.

PAGES: 29
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Biologia Geral
SUMMARY:

Effective conservation efforts and predictions of future impacts on biodiversity depend heavily on publicly available information about species distributions. However, data on species distributions is often patchy, especially in many countries of the Global South where resources for biological surveys have been historically limited. In this study, we use ignorance scores to quantify and visualize gaps and biases in biodiversity data for Namibia, with a focus on five terrestrial taxa at a spatial scale of 10 x 10 km. We model the relationship between ignorance scores and socio-geographical variables using generalized additive models for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS). Our findings demonstrate that despite a high volume of occurrence records available on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), publicly available knowledge of Namibia's terrestrial biodiversity remains limited, with large areas contributing few or no records for key taxa. The exception is birds, which may be due to the influx of data from citizen science platforms. Our study also highlights the importance of citizen science initiatives for biodiversity knowledge and reinforces the usefulness of ignorance scores as an indicator of the relative availability and distribution of species occurrence records. However, further research, biological surveys, and renewed efforts to mobilize existing data are necessary to enhance biodiversity data coverage in countries with patchy data.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Externo(a) à Instituição - MÁRIO RIBEIRO DE MOURA - UNICAMP
Interno(a) - 1278133 - GUILHERME RAMOS DEMETRIO FERREIRA
Presidente - 2882780 - RICHARD JAMES LADLE
Externo(a) à Instituição - THIAGO GONÇALVES SOUZA - UFRPE