Where Have All the Species Gone?
by Brad Kemp
Species Analyst, a computer tool to explore the world's
flora and fauna, is available at habanero.nhm.ku.edu.
In Mexico, birds like roads. Or so it seems if you look at my map showing
where biologists have collected birds during the last hundred years
or so. All the dots on my map are clustered along thoroughfares of one
kind or another. Highways. Byways. Even mud and gravel country paths.
Town Peterson, curator of ornithology at the KU Natural
History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, knows Mexican birds
-- but he knows biologists, too. When Peterson looks at my map, he doesn't
see evidence that birds like roads.
He sees evidence that biologists like roads.
They often collect specimens along roads because, well,
it's a pain to get far from a road. You have to hike. Sometimes you
have to camp. Usually you have to deal with insults from insects and
snakes. Of course, sometimes the terrain is essentially impassable.
Biologists aren't lazy -- it's just that if you're looking to find some
particular birds, the easiest way to do it is to drive out to where
you know they are and start looking.
Knowing where they are is a problem, though, if you're
looking for a rare or endangered species like the slaty finch. On my
map, there are only two dots representing sites where slaty finches
have been found. They're both on roads, it's true, but they're 450 miles
apart, at Jalapa on Mexico's gulf coast and at Tapachula in southern
Mexico. What's more, the birds' habitat at those sites has been destroyed.
If Peterson wants to find a slaty finch, he needs a better map than
mine.
This is why he and some colleagues have invented one.
They've brought to bear the tools of informatics -- or information science
-- on questions having to do with where species occur and how they vary
with the landscape and other environmental factors. Peterson and colleagues
from KU, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the National Autonomous
University of Mexico have devised a software tool called Species Analyst
to launch virtual explorations of the world's flora and fauna.
To help Peterson find a slaty finch, Species Analyst
uses new technology to connect multiple computers at high speeds, querying
the databases of plant and animal collections worldwide. This first
step produces a map with dots at every site where a slaty finch has
been collected. Like my map, it is biased by the difficulties of field
collecting. But Species Analyst sends the data to a supercomputer in
San Diego that adds environmental and ecological data to determine what
kind of climate and landforms characterize the known habitats of slaty
finches and what other species of plants and animals slaty finches are
known to occur with. Species Analyst uses this combined information
to draw a new map, one that predicts where slaty finches ought to be
found.
It shows, in other words, that birds don't cluster along
roads.
Biologists do.
And it can give scientists the kind of direction they
need to make going off-road worthwhile.
But Species Analyst isn't a boon only to scientists
looking for rare species like the slaty finch. It's a high-tech tool
for studying biodiversity in general -- all the plants and animals and
microbes on Earth, along with the intricate relationships that sustain
them. Biodiversity's products -- clean air and water, food, and raw
materials for clothing, shelter, and drugs -- are critical to our economic
well being, to sustaining human health, and to maintaining and improving
our quality of life.
Species Analyst, like all new methods and techniques
in science, will surely result in unpredictable opportunities for new
discoveries and insights into biodiversity.
"We know already that this will be a powerful tool for
dealing with invasive species, species that can cause tremendous economic
troubles," Peterson said. "Consider the Asian long-horned beetle, which
has been wiping out trees in Chicago and New York. It came to the U.S.
in wooden packing material. Species Analyst can take data about where
the beetles live in Asia, compare that to habitats in the U.S., and
show that there's a much greater need to eradicate the beetle from shipments
going to eastern ports - where the beetle can thrive - than those arriving
at, say, Seattle, where the habitat won't support the beetle."
For now, Peterson and his colleagues face the challenge
of convincing museums worldwide to permit Species Analyst to comb through
their data. There are approximately 3 billion plant and animal specimens
held worldwide, the result of three centuries or so of biological exploration.
Peterson estimates that museums have computerized data for between 150
million and 300 million of those specimens. These databases record such
information as what species the specimen belongs to, where it was collected,
who collected it and when. The databases also contain ecological information.
Peterson says that so far, institutions with about 50 million of those
specimens have agreed to contribute data. That's a third or less of
the computerized specimens, but Peterson anticipates that Species Analyst
and similar tools will demonstrate the great economic value of natural
history collections and will prompt further computerization of the data
associated with collections - and a greater willingness to share data.
"We've used Species Analyst to cross-reference census
data on crop damage with rodent populations in Veracruz, Mexico," Peterson
said. "The presence or absence of several species explains about 6 percent
of the variation in crop yield - and although this might sound pretty
minimal, it wouldn't be hard to use this information to increase yields
by a percent or two, which would have a huge economic impact in Veracruz.
Do the same thing with the wheat crop in Kansas and you'll add about
$30 million to the state's economy annually."
Brad Kemp
Assistant director for public affairs
Natural History Museum
