Importance of timely metadata curation to the global surveillance of genetic diversity

作者：Eric D. Crandall, Rachel H. Toczydlowski, Libby Liggins, Ann E. Holmes, Maryam Ghoojaei, Michelle R. Gaither, Briana Wham, Andrea Pritt, Cory Noble, Tanner J. Anderson, Randi L. Barton, Justin T. Berg, Sofia G. Beskid, Alonso Delgado, Emily Farrell, Nan Himmelsbach, Samantha R. Queeno, Thienthanh Trinh, Courtney A. Weyand, Andrew Bentley, John Deck, Cynthia Riginos, Gideon S. Bradburd, Robert J. Toonen · 发表于：Conservation Biology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1111/cobi.14061 · 被引用次数：41 · 研究领域：Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies、Invertebrate Taxonomy and Ecology、Research Data Management Practices

Genetic diversity within species represents a fundamental yet underappreciated level of biodiversity. Because genetic diversity can indicate species resilience to changing climate, its measurement is relevant to many national and global conservation policy targets. Many studies produce large amounts of genome-scale genetic diversity data for wild populations, but most (87%) do not include the associated spatial and temporal metadata necessary for them to be reused in monitoring programs or for acknowledging the sovereignty of nations or Indigenous peoples. We undertook a distributed datathon to quantify the availability of these missing metadata and to test the hypothesis that their availability decays with time. We also worked to remediate missing metadata by extracting them from associated published papers, online repositories, and direct communication with authors. Starting with 848 candidate genomic data sets (reduced representation and whole genome) from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, we determined that 561 contained mostly samples from wild populations. We successfully restored spatiotemporal metadata for 78% of these 561 data sets (n = 440 data sets with data on 45,105 individuals from 762 species in 17 phyla). Examining papers and online repositories was much more fruitful than contacting 351 authors, who replied to our email requests 45% of the time. Overall, 23% of our email queries to authors unearthed useful metadata. The probability...