Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

What is Biodiversity?

What is Biodiversity?

Biodiversity describes the variety of living things at multiple organizational levels: genetic, species and ecosystem diversity. Species diversity includes all branches of the evolutionary tree from single-celled prokaryotic organisms, bacteria, and archaea, to the eukaryotic kingdoms: plants; animals; fungi; and protists. To date, there have been about 1.75 million species identified, and new species are discovered every week.

Threats to Biodiversity

Threats to Biodiversity

There have been five major extinction events throughout geological history, resulting in the elimination of biodiversity, followed by a rebound of species that adapted to the new conditions. In the current geological epoch, the Holocene, there is a sixth extinction event in progress. This mass extinction has been attributed to human activities and is thus provisionally called the Anthropocene. In 2019 the human population reached 7.7 billion people and is projected to comprise 10 billion by...

What is Conservation Biology?

What is Conservation Biology?

Conservation biology is a scientific field that focuses on the preservation of biodiversity in order to protect ecosystems while meeting the needs of the human population. Humans require properly functioning ecosystems to maintain our supply of natural resources, including food, medicines, and building materials.

Global Regulatory Systems

Global Regulatory Systems

Global regulatory systems in bacteria enable rapid and coordinated responses to environmental changes by integrating sensory inputs with gene expression, ensuring efficient adaptation to fluctuating conditions. Key global regulatory mechanisms include regulons, two-component systems, sigma factors, and secondary messengers.Regulons and Global RegulatorsA regulon is a collection of genes and operons controlled by a common global regulator. These regulators enable bacteria to prioritize resource...

Biodiversity and Human Values

Biodiversity and Human Values

Human civilization relies on biodiversity in many ways. Sudden changes in species biodiversity result in environmental changes that can modify weather patterns and therefore human civilizations.

Global Climate Change

Global Climate Change

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Pulmonary inflammation in severe pneumonia is characterised by compartmentalised and mechanistically distinct sub-phenotypes.

Nature communications·2026

Same author

Treatable Traits for Asthma Management in Pregnancy (TTAP): protocol for an Australian multicentre prospective observational cohort study.

BMJ open·2026

Same author

Genomic insights into population structure and conservation of wild olive (<i>Olea europaea</i> subsp. <i>cuspidata</i>) in Oman's Dhofar and Hajar Mountains.

Frontiers in plant science·2026

Same author

A global phylogenetic framework for Diospyros L. (Ebenaceae, Ericales): enhanced taxon and sample coverage through NGS, Sanger sequencing, and herbariomics.

Annals of botany·2026

Same author

Addressing taxonomy shortfalls requires an educational reform.

Trends in plant science·2026

Same author

CactEcoDB: Trait, spatial, environmental, phylogenetic and diversification data for the cactus family.

Scientific data·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 10, 2026

A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles

A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles

Published on: July 11, 2025

How global is the global biodiversity information facility?

Chris Yesson¹, Peter W Brewer, Tim Sutton

¹School of Biological Sciences, Plant Science Laboratories, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, United Kingdom.

|November 8, 2007

Summary

Digitized biodiversity data offer vast biological insights, but coverage and accuracy vary globally. Understanding these data gaps is crucial for accurate spatial analysis and conservation efforts.

More Related Videos

Using the Open-Source MALDI TOF-MS IDBac Pipeline for Analysis of Microbial Protein and Specialized Metabolite Data

Using the Open-Source MALDI TOF-MS IDBac Pipeline for Analysis of Microbial Protein and Specialized Metabolite Data

Published on: May 15, 2019

BtM, a Low-cost Open-source Datalogger to Estimate the Water Content of Nonvascular Cryptogams

BtM, a Low-cost Open-source Datalogger to Estimate the Water Content of Nonvascular Cryptogams

Published on: March 25, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jul 10, 2026

A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles

A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles

Published on: July 11, 2025

Using the Open-Source MALDI TOF-MS IDBac Pipeline for Analysis of Microbial Protein and Specialized Metabolite Data

Using the Open-Source MALDI TOF-MS IDBac Pipeline for Analysis of Microbial Protein and Specialized Metabolite Data

Published on: May 15, 2019

BtM, a Low-cost Open-source Datalogger to Estimate the Water Content of Nonvascular Cryptogams

BtM, a Low-cost Open-source Datalogger to Estimate the Water Content of Nonvascular Cryptogams

Published on: March 25, 2019

Area of Science:

Biodiversity informatics
Digital specimen data
Global biodiversity monitoring

Background:

Global digitization efforts aim to create accessible archives of life on Earth.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a primary gateway to digitized specimen data.
Over 120 million biological observations are now accessible for research.

Purpose of the Study:

To assess the quality and coverage of digitized biodiversity occurrence data.
To evaluate data suitability for global-scale spatial analysis by biologists.
To identify biases and gaps in currently available biodiversity data.

Main Methods:

Investigated digitized data from herbarium and museum collections.
Utilized automatic geographic data verification using legume species distributions.
Empirically tested issues of geographic coverage and accuracy.

Main Results:

Over 1/2 million legume records were analyzed, representing 31% of species.
84% of these legume records passed geographic validation.
Significant biases and gaps were identified, particularly in biodiversity hotspots.

Conclusions:

Digitized biodiversity data are not yet a comprehensive global resource.
Understanding data limitations is essential for reliable biological analyses.
Increased digitization efforts in diverse regions and a focus on data quality are needed.