Phytoplankton Virtual Research Environment
The LifeWatch Italy national node has realised the Phytoplankton Virtual Research Environment (Phyto VRE) for supporting researchers to address basic and applied studies on phytoplankton ecology at a level of resolution going from individual cells to whole assemblages.
The Phyto VRE enables researchers to:
- produce harmonised data on taxonomy and morphological traits by using the Atlas of Phytoplankton, Atlas of Shapes and Phytoplankton Traits Thesaurus;
- access, download, and select LifeWatch Italy datasets (published through the LifeWatch Italy Data Portal and distributed by the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue) or upload their own datasets structured according to the Phyto template based on the LifeWatch Italy Data Schema in order to execute the services included in the VRE;
- faciliatate the computation of morphological and demographic traits (such as hidden dimension, biovolume, surface area, surface-volume ratio, cell carbon content, etc.) and investigate their distribution patterns at different levels of data aggregation (i.e. spatial, temporal, taxonomic) by means of services, which automate a set of operations written in the R language.
Default
Identification
- Date ( Creation )
- 2016
- Date ( Publication )
- 2020
- Date ( Revision )
- 2021
- Status
- Under development / Pre operational
- Version
- 1.1
- Keywords
- Virtual Research Environment
- Keywords
- phytoplankton
- Keywords
- functional traits
- Keywords
- atlas of shapes
- Keywords
- taxonomy
- Keywords
- controlled vocabulary
- Keywords
- computational services
- Keywords
- data analysis
- Access constraints
- License
- Use limitation
- Metadata records are freely available under a Public Domain (CC0 1.0) License; while the VRE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
- Access constraints
- Copyright
- Other constraints
- LifeWatch Italy 2021
- OnLine resource
- Link to the VRE ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )
- OnLine resource
- Info page ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )
- Service Name
- Atlas of Phytoplankton
- Service Description
- It is a guide for the identification of marine and freshwater species. It includes pictures, synonyms, morphological, morphometrical and ecological characters and geographical distribution of the taxa. It also provides formulas to calculate the biovolume and surface area based on linear dimensions according to the organism view (e.g., lateral, frontal, etc.).
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/3ca7867c-0178-4310-a825-5c8bedaf5465
- Service Name
- Atlas of Shapes
- Service Description
- It is a catalogue of geometrical models for calculating biovolume and surface area of phytoplankton taxa. It includes illustrative schemes of simple and complex shapes.
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/97b3148e-368a-423d-85dd-654efd38cdc3
- Service Name
- Phytoplankton Traits Thesaurus
- Service Description
- It is a compilation of standardized definitions and semantic properties of approximately 120 morpho-functional and demographic traits (i.e., abundance, cell carbon content, etc.).
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/88e5ea76-b6cb-4d53-9902-926a60363ad2
- Service Name
- Traits Computation
- Service Description
- It is a web service to calculate phytoplankton traits such as biovolume, surface area, surface/volume ratio, density, cell carbon content, total biovolume, total carbon content.
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ae7bc525-6358-4568-b8d1-b72686b3d575
- Service Name
- Size Class Distribution
- Service Description
- It is a web service to visualize the distribution of individuals in different size classes selected on the basis of logarithmic values of biovolume or carbon content.
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/e21b8d5e-11c5-4545-b205-a34d207f959b
- Service Name
- Size Density Relationships
- Service Description
- It is a web service to calculate and describe the relationships between size (total biovolume and total carbon content) and abundance.
- Service Reference (id)
- https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ec5bca8e-cf11-4b5c-b032-c8f0ba13f9af
- Publications about this VRE
- Stanca, E., Cellamare, M., & Basset, A. (2013) "Geometric shape as a trait to study phytoplankton distributions in aquatic ecosystems". Hydrobiologia, 701(1), 99-116.
- Publications about this VRE
- Stanca E., Roselli L., Cozzoli F., Rosati I., Fiore N. and Basset A. (2017) "Phytoplankton morphological and demographic traits computation in a virtual research environment Phyto VRE", Abstract book of 52nd European Marine Biology Symposium, September 2017 Slovenia. ISBN 978-961-93486-5-9.
- Publications about this VRE
- Stanca, E.; Fiore, N.; Rosati, I.; Vaira, L.; Cozzoli, F.; Basset, A. (2020) "Case study: LifeWatch Italy Phytoplankton VRE", in: Zhao, Z. et al. Towards interoperable research infrastructures for environmental and earth sciences. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 12003: pp. 324-341. https://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/978-3-030-52829-4_18.
- Publications about this VRE
- Ilaria Rosati et al., 2017, A thesaurus for phytoplankton trait-based approaches: Development and applicability, Ecological Informatics, 42, 129-138, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2017.10.014.
- VRE Helpdesk
- https://helpdesk.lifewatchitaly.eu/