EG-ABI Expert Group Report 2022 Popular

Expert Group on Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics (EG-ABI) 2020-22 Report

Expert Group of the Life Sciences Group

Report Author(s): Ben Raymond (Australia), Anton Van de Putte (Belgium), Zephyr Sylvester (USA), and the EG-ABI core group

Summary of activities from 2020-22

The Expert Group on Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics was formed in 2012, and its initial 8-year term extended in 2020 for two years to 2022. The extension was accompanied by a change in leadership (office-holders and new core group members) and a refocusing of the group's mission and terms of reference towards tools and resources for data access, integration, analysis, and synthesis, and enabling the community to produce and utilize those resources. In March 2021 we held an online information session and established a mailing list.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge for our group, as of course it was for everyone. Nevertheless, we collectively managed some good outcomes with collaborations on various projects (see projects and publications below), and continued development of tools, primarily R packages for data access, analysis, and visualization.

In the latter part of 2022 we will look to continue our current projects and also help the community re-establish links post-pandemic. We will use EG-ABI funds to offer some small travel bursaries and a data-visualisation (or similar) competition with some small prizes. These will be focused on, but not exclusive to, early-career researchers and those from countries with developing Antarctic programs.