ArticleConservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology2023
Importance of timely metadata curation to the global surveillance of genetic diversity.
Article in Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Insights into the genomic features of the emerging pathogens Cronobacter malonaticus and Cronobacter turicensis.Folia microbiologica · 2026Article
- CartograPlant: bridging genomic, phenotypic, and environmental data to advance plant resilience and eco-evolutionary insight.Genetics · 2026Article
- Navigating Cetacean Mitochondrial Genome Data: Identifying Coverage and Deficiencies in Public Repositories.Molecular ecology resources · 2026Article
- Two decades (2005 to 2025) of avian influenza research trends, knowledge gaps and distribution of emerging H5N1 2.3.4.4b clade in South Asia.One health outlook · 2026Article
- Molecular Passports for Ex Situ Seed Donors: Enhanced Genetic Monitoring for Plant Conservation.Molecular ecology · 2026Review
- A Darwin Core dataset of scorpions (Arachnida, Scorpiones) from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) Collections.Biodiversity data journal · 2026Article
- Current stewardship practices in invasion biology limit the value and secondary use of genomic data.Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- Drivers of genetic diversity across the marine tree of life.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Journeying towards best practice data management in biodiversity genomics.Molecular ecology resources · 2025Article
- What is the real value of omics data? Enhancing research outcomes and securing long-term data excellence.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- The European Reference Genome Atlas: piloting a decentralised approach to equitable biodiversity genomics.npj biodiversity · 2024Article
- Contextualising samples: supporting reference genomes of European biodiversity through sample and associated metadata collection.npj biodiversity · 2024Article
- Best practices for genetic and genomic data archiving.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Review
- Genomic Tools in Biological Invasions: Current State and Future Frontiers.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Metadata integrity in bioinformatics: Bridging the gap between data and knowledge.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
24 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Genetic diversity within species represents a fundamental yet underappreciated level of biodiversity. Because genetic diversity can indicate species resilience to changing climate, its measurement is relevant to many national and global conservation policy targets. Many studies produce large amounts of genome-scale genetic diversity data for wild populations, but most (87%) do not include the associated spatial and temporal metadata necessary for them to be reused in monitoring programs or for acknowledging the sovereignty of nations or Indigenous peoples. We undertook a distributed datathon to quantify the availability of these missing metadata and to test the hypothesis that their availability decays with time. We also worked to remediate missing metadata by extracting them from associated published papers, online repositories, and direct communication with authors. Starting with 848 candidate genomic data sets (reduced representation and whole genome) from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, we determined that 561 contained mostly samples from wild populations. We successfully restored spatiotemporal metadata for 78% of these 561 data sets (n = 440 data sets with data on 45,105 individuals from 762 species in 17 phyla). Examining papers and online repositories was much more fruitful than contacting 351 authors, who replied to our email requests 45% of the time. Overall, 23% of our email queries to authors unearthed useful metadata. The probability of retrieving spatiotemporal metadata declined significantly as age of the data set increased. There was a 13.5% yearly decrease in metadata associated with published papers or online repositories and up to a 22% yearly decrease in metadata that were only available from authors. This rapid decay in metadata availability, mirrored in studies of other types of biological data, should motivate swift updates to data-sharing policies and researcher practices to ensure that the valuable context provided by metadata is not lost to conservation science forever.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.