Aggregation of Italian Lichen Data in ITALIC 7.0

Abstract

The creation of a coordinated publishing and aggregation system of biodiversity data is a challenging task, which calls for the adoption of open data standards. ITALIC, the information system on Italian lichens, originated from the conversion of the first Italian checklist into a database. While the first version was “frozen”, the present version is continuously updated and provides access to several other data sources and services, such as ecological indicator values, ecological notes and information, traits, images, digital identification keys, etc. The identification keys especially are an ongoing work that will lead to a complete national flora by 2026. Last year, new services were added, one for aligning lists of names with the national checklist, the other for aggregating occurrence data deriving from the digitization of 13 Italian herbaria, forming a total of ca. 88,000 records, which are distributed under a CC BY license and can be exported as CSV files in the Darwin Core format. An aggregator for lichen data will encourage the national community of lichenologists to produce and aggregate further data sets, and it will stimulate data reuse according to the paradigms of open science.