Mathieu Colléter, Nereus Program Fellow (UBC), will attend the 13th annual FishBase Symposium hosted by the FishBase Information and Research Group, Inc. (FIN) in Los Baños, Philippines, as an invited speaker. He will present EcoBase, the EwE models information repository he developed within the Ecopath Research and Development Consortium.
Abstract:
ECOBASE: A REPOSITORY SOLUTION TO GATHER AND COMMUNICATE INFORMATION FROM EWE MODELS
The Ecopath Research and Development Consortium initiated the project of an Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) models repository. Indeed, EwE models integrate several types of data: descriptive data on species abundance, diet composition and catch; computed data on species production, trophic level and ecotrophic efficiency as well as ecosystem properties. These data are often only provided in supplementary materials, which are not always easily accessible. Besides, each EwE model is also associated with a particular ecosystem with specific characteristics, as well as a corresponding publication. The former information represents critical metadata when one wants to conduct a meta-analysis, yet it is not systematically provided by the modelers.
Thus, EcoBase was developed with the intention of making published models discoverable, accessible and reusable to the scientific community. The main goals of EcoBase are to (i) gather published EwE models; (ii) communicate on EwE modeling research; (iii) facilitate meta-analyses based on EwE models. In EcoBase, we built a framework where all critical metadata may be stored, in a standardized and granular fashion, so that they can be reused as criteria based on which models can be selected for future meta-analyses. Overall, EcoBase will provide an online repository where to make your own model accessible, as soon as it is published. We believe EcoBase will create synergies and enhance collaborations between scientists in aquatic ecology, in particular by enabling new interactions with other databases as FishBase and SeaLifeBase.
