Software infrastructure and data pipelines established for technical interoperability within a cross-border cooperation for the flora of the Bohemian Forest.

Background: The timely and geographical resolutions, as well as the quantity and taxon concepts of records on the occurrence of plants near national borders is often ambiguous. This is due to the regional focus and different approaches of the contributing national and regional databases and networks of the neighbouring countries. Careful data transformation between national data providers is essential for understanding distribution patterns and its dynamics for organisms in areas along the national borders.

Chemical properties of key metabolites determine the global distribution of lichens.

In lichen symbioses, fungal secondary metabolites provide UV protection on which lichen algae such as trebouxiophycean green algae-the most prominent group of photobionts in lichen symbioses-sensitively depend. These metabolites differ in their UV absorbance capability and solvability, and thus vary in their propensity of being leached from the lichen body in humid and warm environments, with still unknown implications for the global distribution of lichens. In this study covering more than 10,000 lichenised fungal species, we show that the occurrence of fungal-derived metabolites in combination with their UV absorbance capability and their probability of being leached in warm and humid environments are important eco-evolutionary drivers of global lichen distribution.

FAIR digital objects in environmental and life sciences should comprise workflow operation design data and method information for repeatability of study setups and reproducibility of results.

Repeatability of study setups and reproducibility of research results by underlying data are major requirements in science. Until now, abstract models for describing the structural logic of studies in environmental sciences are lacking and tools for data management are insufficient. Mandatory for repeatability and reproducibility is the use of sophisticated data management solutions going beyond data file sharing.

A Rare Glimpse into the Past of the Anthrax Pathogen .

The bacterium is the causative agent of the zoonotic disease anthrax. While genomics of extant isolates established in-depth phylogenomic relationships, there is scarce information on the historic genomics of the pathogen. Here, we characterized the oldest documented specimen.

Meta-omics data and collection objects (MOD-CO): a conceptual schema and data model for processing sample data in meta-omics research.

With the advent of advanced molecular meta-omics techniques and methods, a new era commenced for analysing and characterizing historic collection specimens, as well as recently collected environmental samples. Nucleic acid and protein sequencing-based analyses are increasingly applied to determine the origin, identity and traits of environmental (biological) objects and organisms. In this context, the need for new data structures is evident and former approaches for data processing need to be expanded according to the new meta-omics techniques and operational standards.

A generic workflow for effective sampling of environmental vouchers with UUID assignment and image processing.

http://diversityworkbench.net/Portal/DiversityImageInspector.

Actionable, long-term stable and semantic web compatible identifiers for access to biological collection objects.

Unlabelled: With biodiversity research activities being increasingly shifted to the web, the need for a system of persistent and stable identifiers for physical collection objects becomes increasingly pressing. The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities agreed on a common system of HTTP-URI-based stable identifiers which is now rolled out to its member organizations. The system follows Linked Open Data principles and implements redirection mechanisms to human-readable and machine-readable representations of specimens facilitating seamless integration into the growing semantic web.

A new species of Stigmatomyces from Baltic amber, the first fossil record of Laboulbeniomycetes.

A fossil ascomycete was found attached to the thorax of a stalk eyed fly (Diopsidae: Prosphyracephala succini) in a fragment of Baltic amber. The fungus is assigned to the extant genus Stigmatomyces and described as S. succini sp.

Tuberculina: rust relatives attack rusts.

Molecular sequence data together with ultrastructural features were used to infer the phylogenetic position of Tuberculina species. Additional ultrastructural characteristics were used to determine their mode of nutrition. We investigated ultrastructural morphology of the type species Tuberculina persicina and determined base sequences from the D1/ D2 region of the nuclear large-subunit ribosomal DNA of the three commonly distinguished Tuberculina species, T.