EuroAPPA meeting notes

EuroAPPA Meeting Notes

Jul 7, 2026

Jun 2, 2026

Reserved for discussion on reviews of the EU Poll Hub.

May 6, 2026

Jeff, Claus, Jorrit, Cala

Specific EuroAPPA “technical”

Technical topics to discuss (in this and upcoming technical meetings to decide on details):
Taxonomic alignment
Geospatial units
Curation of datasets
Download format / Data publishing, packaging and distribution.
Checklists!

Cala suggests to focus on taxonomic alignment today.

Jeff - we never spoke about putting phenological data into EuroAPPA - and, timestamped flower visitation events are measurements of phenology. In other words, EuroAPPA can be used as a source of phenological data. [Jeff added: with a large enough data set for a species, this can be assessed over space as well as time].

Cala - DoPI focusses less of crops, whereas CropPoll does. A GloBI data review of CropPol - Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2026). Versioned Archive and Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found within ibartomeus/CropPol hash://md5/82459bdd283b7701a00d84c556386d89. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18437698 .

Taxonomic alignment

GloBI workflow:

verbatim data -> versioned -> parsed (supports >40 data formats) -> taxonomic alignment -> “interpreted” dataset -> compile -> dataset corpus.

outscope - “elton” (extracting interactions claims from index datasets) / “preston” (versioning and provenance tracking)
inscope - after parsing, “nomer” is used to align candidate taxonomic names across many taxonomies (including catalogue of life, GBIF etc.) - for more info see https://globalbioticinteractions.org/process .

taxonomic alignment is an iterative data processing workflow with many moving parts: changes in datasets, taxonomic resources and tools.

The workflow is now modular, e.g. nomer can run independently.
Nomer runs quickly and creates intermediate files with the aligned name lists.

Jeff: how to deal with taxonomic names that will change in the future?
Jorrit: this is why it is important to record original names as well (=verbatim names) along with any alignment. Nomer will resolve names using the associated taxonomic authority (catalog of life, GBIF, etc).

Claus - does this workflow run automatically to keep taxonomic names updated? Jorrit: currently the database runs ~every week. Reviews keep copies of all processes but also original data (data.zip).

For EuroAPPA- curatorial decisions - which taxonomic authority to use to align names?
Wisest is to pick at least two for each plant and pollinator (so four).

Jeff- we need to also have good taxonomic resources for vertebrate pollinators for overseas territories
Jorrit: we can offer users to use multiple alignments and explain the process

Cala: how/when to decide?
Jorrit: up to us!
Cala: we can adjust to the modelling teams in Butterfly (Cala will ask)
Claus: let’s run a test and see what works best (e.g. for bees). Modelling teams are likely using GBIF
Jeff: for plants, POWO might be best - Jorrit to look into availability for name alignment

For the prototype: let’s pick two and we can always revisit

To report on the process of creating the prototype, Jorrit will create a series of blog posts.

Geospatial Units
Pick two as well, NUTS can be one of them

Download formats
Let’s start with
.csv, .tsv and GeoPackage/Parquet

Next - Jorrit to blogpost with zenodo appendix with the data
From that, we request feedback and adjust as needed.

May 5, 2026 (Reserved for discussion on the UGent features)

Attendees: Nilgun, Claus, Jorrit, Nick, Andrea, Ivan, Markus, Laura, Cala, Jeff, Finn, Alex Splitt, Noa

Agenda:

1) Jorrit to make short, time sensitive announcement.
2) Demo of UGent apps

Andrea writes:

Unfortunately you were not notified when I published the milestone under this nextcloud folder:
https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/f/26386
From there you can access the full app directory You can either run on your pc the shiny app scripts or read and the scripts to generate the data. I strongly recommend reading the Readme file.
You can also play with the apps from these links:
-For app A “Pollination alert map” (see also Euroappa user case 10 in our shared file)
https://0vf7gq-andrea0alfredo0roberto-galassini.shinyapps.io/EU_Pollination_Alert_map_v20260404/
-For app B “Pollinator alert map”
https://0vf7gq-andrea0alfredo0roberto-galassini.shinyapps.io/EU_pollinator_alert_app_v20260405/
What I need to discuss with you is how the data could flow from euroappa to the data tables the apps feed on.

About the functionality of the app itself and its design I am aware it will need many improvements and some radical changes. Any feedback is welcome but it’s not necessary that we discuss this today very long. See you later, Andrea

Notes on Demo Andrea -
DEMO 1 (Use case 10) - Pollination alert map
Pollinator dependent crops and suitability of pollinators that are there

  1. First downloads zip files of data on crops in different countries
  2. Identifieds crop dependent on pollination (choices for regions and crops) - NUTS3 level (agricultural land/crop (in ha) in the NUTSX level expressed in proportions of total crops in the relevant area)
  3. Data from pollinators - Phenology (from WP1 - spp distribution models) - Data on suitability of the region for pollinators (from 0-1) per species. - TO DO: Check with Joe if there is a reality check. Andrea in his PhD will have some data to check for suitabilities of NL.
  4. Phenology data of crops (presence-absence matrix),
  5. Pollination effectiveness data (crop - pollinator, index score between 0 and 1)/crop
  6. FINAL RESULT - Pollinator effectiveness of local spp for the crops in the area and in time. Multiplication of suitability score and effectiveness score

Input data from EuroAPPA:

  • Suitability of pollinators/region
  • Phenology data for pollinators and crops
  • Pollinator effectiveness

Requirements for EuroAPPA:

  • API to link the Shinny app,
  • Standardised data (taxonomic alignment)
  • Into the future: access the best quality data to apps!

Noa: Can this be made dynamic? Thinking of factors like climate through impacts on the phenology of plants
Andrea: Different biographical regions in Europa with a phenology table. He uses GBIF taxonomic reference but he is open to other proposals.
Ivan: Variations in the estimations of blooming was not thought to be included

Claus: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468265922000944 , Jorrit responds: there’s many R packages that do name parsing, name alignment etc. Many are just wrappers around some web APIs that may change or update at any time.

@article{ZHANG20231,
title = {U.Taxonstand: An R package for standardizing scientific names of plants and animals},
journal = {Plant Diversity},
volume = {45},
number = {1},
pages = {1-5},
year = {2023},
issn = {2468-2659},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2022.09.001},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468265922000944},
author = {Jian Zhang and Hong Qian},

Noa: For crops use the IACS taxonomy (EU-Commission): https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/financing-cap/assurance-and-audit/managing-payments_en and INSPIRE:INSPIRE Directive and Knowledge Base: https://knowledge-base.inspire.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Nick: https://bluegreen-labs.github.io/phenor/
Jorrit: https://opentraits.org/

Jeff: SDNs
Ivan: They are also checking other biodiversity indicators with SDMs in the NL

Noa: Spp interactions could be one of the functionalities of EuroAPPA or use the Pollinator Hub as standardised data repository
Jorrit: EuroAPPA creates automated dataflows to integrate relevant data. Name alignment is the access point. EuroAPPA is an species interaction dataset. Jorrit would like also that it is an automated data integration flow.

Questions for Andrea -
(jorrit: I tried to run the app, and got “Error in library(leaflet) : there is no package called ‘leaflet’”, suggest to include in list of required packages; more generally, I tried to run the shiny app and after installing 1.5GiB of rstudio and waiting for an hour to install packages, I was still unable to run the app due to unresolved dependencies (e.g., Configuration failed because libudunits2.so was not found). This is understandable, and just a way of saying that deployment of Shiny apps can be quite complex, even if it works perfectly in your own environment. My rule of thumb is that apps come and go and data archives are “forever” (or less perishable). Are you planning to publish pre-packaged data outcomes for various combinations of crop-pollinator-geospatial-temporal)?
(Jorrit: about data - how are you planning to stabilize the version used (e.g., crop data) ?
(Jorrit: about code - where do you keep your source code and data? Suggest to include links in README.md suggest to keep intermediate release if possible)
(Jorrit: EuroAPPA keeps species interaction data, however, you mentioned that distribution models and phenology is also included in EuroAPPA. Can you please elaborate on which use case you base this on? In my mind, these are trait datasets (e.g., phenology dataset) and are outscope of EuroAPPA as this point, but perhaps we should reconsider?
(Jorrit: in the source data, I don’t see explicit crop-pollinator data, can you confirm that this relations are implied through the SDMs. Note that pollinator effectiveness appears to have the cop-pollinator relation as expressed in some number 0-1. )
(Jorrit: I notice that you are using common names for crops (e.g., “cherry”) and scientific names for pollinators. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on taxonomic alignment and the taxonomic “backbone” you are expecting to use. Note that taxonomic alignment opens up integration with phenology datasets.).

Markus - The modeling comes first, so they will be doing the standardisation. Regarding traits, he doubts that there will be one sole database that includes everything. Databases/models with climatic data/algorithms that affects the phenology might already exist.
Andrea -
Jorrit - It would be worthy to look for datasets on traits: https://opentraits.org/datasets/PhenObs. We will have to make the assumptions explicit in the data.
Cala - https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/About.php / Jorrit: https://opentraits.org/datasets/try

Noa: The shinnyapp is in the server of the university or in shinny server.
Ivan: Shinny server
Jorrit: Whatever we end up doing, we should be explicit about how long we will keep it running.
Andrea: Integration in EuroAPPA has also been considered. He works first in shinny app and then we will see how we do in EuroAPPA.
Cala: Even EuroAPPA will be temporary. Let’s keep it like that, it is clean and functional.

Jorrit: EuroAPPA is a way to share datasets and review datasets.

Apr 7, 2026

Attendees: Cala, Jeff, Finn, Joe, Jorrit, Noa

Plan for today: pick up discussion about features in EuroAPPA

  • outstanding question: Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) as a way to partition geospatial regions. Is this scheme one we’ll use to let folks indicate what region they are interested in?
  • a user might want to distinguish between native and non-native plant species in a search in EuroAPPA - how do we sort this? We need a taxonomic list of European plants.

Notes:

Cala: DoPI - three months of funding left for student transcription. about 500k records entered. Nick sends datasets to students; they reformat the data (includes taxonomic alignment with checklists, the verbatim/original name is kept), collect the metadata, and put associated data in a separate folder. Nick then reviews the data contributed by the students; Nick merges the data into a single “big” spreadsheet. Still working on a checklist of the European non-wind pollinated plants. on the genus level.

Joe: This reminds me that I need to add the interaction data from the pollination projects we have in Norway. My PhD student is sick at the moment though but I’ll ask her when she gets back.

Jeff: native vs non-native (aka neophyte) categorization - suggests there’s more nuanced ways of (1) Archaeophyte (a plant that was not present here just after the last ice age and was introduced more than c. 1000 years ago). (2) Biogeographic natives - might have been native many years ago, but not anymore, or have the potential to arrive here under their own steam as the climate changes. Lots of studies comparing pollinators of native vs non-native species, but not aware of studies that assess archeophytes.

Joe: related to taxonomic alignment; mentions the automated tools that Jorrit showed in another meeting. Wondering about taxonomic alignment workflows - do we harmonise after collecting data, for example?

Jorrit: taxonomic alignment is the most demanding task for GloBI. Taxonomic resources change as well as datasets, so like for DoPI, it is important to keep the original names given by authors in datasets (verbatium).

Cala: back to the native/non-native discussion - how do we create such a checklist?
Jeff: BSBI has native/non-native attributes

Joe: Native vs Non-native is a super political question in Norway too. Partially because if you go back to last glacial maximum then everything was under a massive ice sheet.

Jeff: Yes, shows the importance of natural dispersal mechanisms!

Noa: native and non-native question is a political question - subjective because it depends on the sources you check. Just use the description date (description meaning: when was the species found in the region, not the date of the taxonomic description) and reference the publication when the date has been provided.

Cala: proposes to include the classification native/non-native/neophite/archeophyte/naturalised/alien, etc as a potential feature in EuroAPPA, for datasets where it is available. This would need to be georeferenced as well, because a species can be native in a part of Europe and have colonised another region recently. (see below - after this very interesting discussion, we decided to point EuroAPPA users to local resources that classify plants/pollinators into native, etc rather than try to come up with a general classification).

Jeff: Including the dates/periods in a dataset would include a great amount of time.

Finn: Classifications might differ between studies, so this complicates thing further.

There could be lists in different native languages. Here is a national example from Germany: https://www.bfn.de/publikationen/bfn-schriften/bfn-schriften-731-naturschutzfachliche-invasivitaetsbewertungen-und

Jorrit: there are common approaches: we all want to do a dataset of what existed where and when. But then there is this interpretation need for which there is not agreement. EuroAPPA is supposed to enrich data. However, first we need to harmonise the data. We have to find a way to enable data products that allow to do that. In order to do the native/non native, we need taxonomic alignment and create a database that annotates the records in a certain way and EuroAPPA should enable that

BSBI definition: “Archaeophytes are non-native (alien) taxa that were introduced by humans, either intentionally or unintentionally, and became naturalised in Britain and Ireland between the start of the Neolithic period and AD1500. Most were introduced by early farmers mainly in the Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman or Medieval periods. Many originated as contaminants of crops or as escapes from gardens where they were grown for culinary or medicinal uses.” Source: https://bsbi.org/learn/getting-started/terms/general-terms/archaeophytes

Jorrit: Maybe this is something for the future?

Jeff: I think that’s a fair point that Jorrit is making - are we trying to take DoPI too far, is this not a use case for the future?

Joe: These terms are political interpretations, which differ depending on who does the definition. For the purpose of the analysis, what we need to do is to fill the gaps and then eventually define our criteria for the classification of species.

Jorrit: EuroAPPA aims to provide data that allows different kinds of analysis, incl. annotating data. Our aim is to make sure that the basic information to do the annotation is in place. For geographic coordinates, GEO, for taxonomic codes, it will be something else, for data and time, another standards, etc. Like this, others can built on it. Here’s a recent taxonomic review of a published version of DoPI - one of >400 such reviews of species interaction dataset. https://depot.globalbioticinteractions.org/reviews/globalbioticinteractions/dopi/#taxonomic-alignment

Noa: In the EU Poll Hub we have been working on a tool to help the standardisation and the cleaning of the datasets. Maybe the DoPi database could be passed by this filter to help in the “cleaning” and standardisation.

Mar 3, 2026

Attendees: Cala, Jorrit, Andrea, Ivan, Finn, Jeff, Claus, Nicholas, Noa
Plan for today:

  • Informal discussion on integration of tools to be developed by Andrea and Ivan into EuroAPPA
  • If there is time, pick up discussion about features in EuroAPPA (from Feb 24) or schedule meeting for that

Link to EuroAPPA use cases - https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/apps/files/files/11403?dir=/Butterfly/WORK_PACKAGES/WP1_WORKSPACE/EuroAPPA\&editing=false\&openfile=true

Andrea presents: Use Case 10 - Scientist, NGO’s/lobbies, Policymakers - using Task 5.1 Pollination alert map (Andrea)

Alert maps will feed on maps generated in Butterfly WP1.
The alert tool will generate a dependency

Andrea: Is EuroAPPA having dependency, efficiency or blooming data?
Ivan: suggests to differentiate between the input data we have and the input data we need/want. Then it is possible to start filling those gaps.

Ivan: mentions phenology of pollinator and crop (e.g., are the bees flying at the same time that the crop is blooming)

“Pollinators” from the tools perspectives will mean those taxa for which there is distribution data from SDMs provided through WP1 (?). Question: Can you point to an example of a published SDM model is a data format that is likely to be published. Andrea - data format is “simple” for each “NUTS” (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/ ) region - a number between 0-1 to indicate the presence of a pollinator. Jorrit suggests to provide an example of what this looks like.

Jorrit: It is important to know what the definition of crop and pollinator is (which species are included/excluded in the list). Suggests to publish a checklist on what you consider to be a crop. Ivan mentioned that Andrea has such a map already.

Valor will publish information on pollination dependency of multiple crop species and cultivars and lists of species, which are relevant for Butterfly.

Discussion on geographic resolution for SDMs: NUTS versus other possibilities. Andrea shows the different NUTS levels on an example of the Netherlands

Andrea: The crop map we are using is this: Jänicke, C., Petersen, K. A., Schmidts, P., Müller, D., & Jepsen, M. R. (2026). Harmonized IACS inventory [Data set]. In Field and farm-level data on agricultural land use for the European Union (1.3, Vol. 12, Number 1, p. 1050). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18670815

Cala asks where/when calculations of pollination demand/supply in the new tools?
Andrea: explains how they would do the calculations using the Shiny package in R
They can create pollination supply/demand tables

Jeff: How are the weightings for the pollinator effectiveness determined?
Ivan: Currently Mock-data, but it will be filled in if there is data. Hopefully, Valor will be able to provide some of this data. The idea is to already have the variable in the calculation and then replace the Mock-data with actual data.

Regarding some of the current mock-data: Ollerton, J., Coulthard, E., Tarrant, S., Woolford, J., Ré Jorge, L. & Rech, A.R. (2025) Butterflies, bumblebees and hoverflies are equally effective pollinators of Knautia arvensis (Caprifoliaceae), a generalist plant species with compound inflorescences. Journal of Applied Entomology 149: 685-696

Noa: Here is the publication of the EFSA: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/sp.efsa.2023.EN-7982
Annex F I think. I’m searching

Jorrit: Shiny apps come and go. It is important to think about how we can provide a long-term usability of the data.
Joe:
Ivan: we absolutely recognize the need for tool lon

Andrea and Ivan have milestone (13?) in March to provide a mock-version
Milestone 13: Name: Pollination and pollinator Alert Maps operational with dummy data -
Means of verification: Code (GitHub). Code-based milestones will be accompanied by documentation that demonstrates its use in an interactive documentation format such as a Jupyter notebook or Quarto document. The consortium will review this documentation to ensure that the code gives correct results and that its interface is sufficiently clear and well-documented to be usable by both consortium members and outside user-groups

Next meeting 07.04
Ivan and Andrea will be back in the meeting in May and present their milestone

##

Feb 24, 2026

Attendees:
Jeff, Cala, Jorrit, Claus

Plan for today:

Jorrit clarifies that what we were calling below “Features” are really “Requirements”, so correcting everywhere below. Features are properties of a working prototype (e.g., download button, search box), so they will map to Requirements.

Prototype:
https://euroappa.github.io/

Jorrit gave an overview of the bash script to run the queries.

Jeff: need to ensure that taxonomic authorities are included.
Claus: taxonomic authority - which source? Should we include the authority name? Argues for having a way to keep things up to date, and not include too much taxonomic information. How do you select records to be included in a specific country? How do you determine the full range of the species?

Jorrit says that having the known range of the species as an extra feature would help identify outliers or potential mistakes in searches. Failure modes - “ghost” species showing up as artifacts of suspicious taxonomic name alignment - quality is important!

In the prototype:

filters Cala thinks we need (buttons), all optional for users, so they decide what to output: Country, coordinates, date, visit versus pollination (= pollination efficiency), source database, phenology data (this last point added after meeting with Andrea and Ivan)

This is in addition to taxonomic criteria already in the prototype options.

Feb 20, 2026

Attendees:
Jeff, Cala, Jorrit

Plan for today:

1) a smaller group of us will review all compiled Use Cases here: https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/f/11403 and pick the ones we are going to focus on (remove redundancy, keep ones that are representative and the different ones)
2) Decide on main features that we need to implement (each linked to specific use cases)

Discussing An application of Use Case 3.2 - in which Claus uses EuroAPPA to create a list of likely insect pollinator families to narrow the scope of a literature review in Web of Science etc. Claus requested a recent copy of the taxonomic info of the EU-DoPI, Nick shared an unversioned copy of DoPI Taxonomic Checklist used by DoPI to facilitate data entry by email, then Jorrit try to help format the list and align names with catalogue of life using an automated workflow, which led to a list of suspicious names listed in DoPI, Nick updated DoPI Checklist with corrections and noted that “Temnothorax algiricus” was actually valid, but flagged as suspicious by an automated workflow because an older version of Catalogue of Life was used. A newer version does have the name. For details see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/nomer/issues/209 .

Jeff notes that Temnothorax algiricus is a species COMPLEX of ants which may be why the name did not appear in the earlier COL: these species complexes are always taxonomically controversial.

Cala notices a common theme across use cases - therefore Jeff suggests we focus on a specific set of stakeholders. One obvious stakeholder is an internal researcher, for example:
Give me a list of all pollinator interactions in a specific area (geospatial, taxonomic, temporal range?) (Feature 1. generate an interaction dataset on the fly to produce a map and/or a html/csv table) give me a list of plants/pollinator names (Feature 2. generate a checklist on the fly to produce a map or html/csv table) for that specific area. (Feature 3. have a way to dispute results or suggest improvements - capture the output of a review of a user of generated EuroAPPA lists)

Use Case <-> Requirements <-> Prototype
(<-> arrows going in both directions)
Jeff would like to hear from the modellers (Joe, Ivan), and Cala suggests to get Ivan and Andrea involved to develop a use case describing how EuroAPPA could be of use in developing models.

Cala asks if we need to worry about file types/format at this point. Jorrit says no, we start simple and build in response to feedback.

Features we identified today:

  1. Generate interactions dataset on the fly to produce a map and/or a html/csv table
  2. generate a checklist on the fly to produce a map or html/csv table
  3. Review: have a way to dispute results or suggest improvements - capture the output of a review of a user of generated EuroAPPA lists

Next steps:

  1. Prepare document with Requirements- link each to related Use Cases (Cala)
  2. Jorrit will come up with a first Prototype (P1)

We will meet next week to look at the first version of P1.

Feb 3, 2026

Attendees: Cala, Jorrit, Claus, Nick, Noa, Laura, Alex

Agenda
1. post meeting saturation - review of the conference food
2. review of use cases (new and old)
3.

Cala: from the Butterfly last week: Ivan Meeus and Andrea are planning to host their models and maps in EuroAPPA so it would be good to start planning.

Jorrit: it would be good to get some mock data and package them in the format they are expected to be delivered.

Noa - wonders how EuroAPPA will differ from existing resources. Noa shared the many platforms on pollinators in Europe and wonders what we need to understand what is the added value for EuroAPPA. Here some: https://pollinatoracademy.eu/ , https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/pollinators_en , https://green-forum.ec.europa.eu/nature-and-biodiversity/pollinators-hive_en , https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/pollinator-park_en , https://app.pollinatorhub.eu/

Noa: EuroAPPA should have its own niche. It could be: can provide access to data in “a playful way” to cater all

Jorrit - 3 step process (as presented in the AGM) 1) use the platform to find data, 2) review in different formats (maps is only of them), 3) disseminate

Noa - which technological infrastructure will be used for EuroAPPA?
Jorrit - open access software tools that already exist (developed over the years for GloBI)

Jorrit- rules for integrating data/models/resources into EuroAPPA
Make available in digital form
Make it findable

https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/2026/01/22/euroappa/ - shows an example of how to put combined reviewed species interaction datasets onto a map using open source software.

With the https://globalbioticinteractions.org/process giving some idea of how the GloBI workflows translate existing datasets into interpreted data products and data reviews.

Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.08.005.

Allen-Perkins, Alfonso, Magrach, Ainhoa, Dainese, Matteo, Garibaldi, Lucas A., Kleijn, David, Rader, Romina, Reilly, James R., et al. 2022. “CropPol: A Dynamic, Open and Global Database on Crop Pollination.” Ecology 103(3): e3614. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3614. For associated GloBI review see Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). A Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found in ibartomeus/OBservData hash://md5/35b1210f8b22088babe73b2b9012c15e. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15256406

Cala - I wonder if we can get funding from the EU to cover the costs of hosting EuroAPPA?

Next steps -

3) In about two weeks, a smaller group of us will review all compiled Use Cases here: https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/f/11403 and pick the ones we are going to focus on (remove redundancy, keep ones that are representative and the different ones)
4) Decide on main features that we need to implement (each linked to specific use cases)
5) Work on EuroAPPA prototypes (for each feature) including webpage in two months to get feedback from the larger group
6) Share within Butterly to get more feedback and use cases?

Jan 29, 2026

Notes from discussion in EuroAPPA workshop at the Aarhus AGM in response to questions:

  • Are all of these Use Cases appropriate for the overarching aims of Butterfly in relation to stewardship of pollinators?
  • Which Use Cases are better than others?
  • Can you think of other Use Cases that would be appropriate?

12 people (more than half) thought that the existing UCs covered their WPs (from handout that was circulated on paper: https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/f/18256 )

Q1: Are all UCs useful re stewardship

A1 \- More UCs on policy or for companies/youth organisations to use EuroAPPA for political purposes. CALA: Great point, could be useful if we make it searchable for example to look at whether pollinators have declined in certain areas, maybe with maps.

A2. Have UCs at different scales, e.g. cities, youth groups, rather than just individuals.

A3 JOE: Projects for land managers - strict rules about when and where they can use research projects to block planning applications, so legal aspects to consider

A4 Green spaces UCs, something easy to access especially for youth groups/teachers.

JORRIT - disclaimer: will make decisions about which UCs will be prioritised, can’t do everything.

SARA - going beyond just interactions, “stories” about pollinators.

NICOLA -Existing UC for farmers may not be useful as many work in cooperatives

Question about protected species - add in IUCN Red List categories for those species that have been assessed (turn this into a separate UC?).

If anyone has other UCs that they think of afterwards, please send them through.

Jan 13, 2026

Attendees - Cala, Nilgun, Claus, Jeff, Jorrit, Finn

Agenda - Make plan for the workshop in the AGM (happening Jan 28-30)

For the EuroAPPA Use Case workshop - Claus, Nilgun, Finn, Joe will be onsite. Cala, Jorrit will join remotely, as Jeff will be there for day 1 and possibly part of day 2.

Cala - has been sending use case requests to individuals relevant to the project. Suggest main goal for workshop- get many use cases. We need to have an introduction to introduce this main goal to the audience (5-10 minutes estimated), then request use cases. Perhaps use menti or some kind of web form to submit use cases. Jorrit: Pick a few or review them as a group.

Finn: Let’s use paper within the workshop and collect at the end.
Jeff: At the end ask how these Use Cases relate to the aims of Butterfly, especially the idea of “stewardship” of pollinators.

Plan (see final version below):

Part 1: Introduction with slides: 10 min
What is EuroAPPA
What it will do (and won’t)
Quickly show what a good use case and how to prepare a use case
Show a good example, maybe also a bad one (fake)

Part 2: Invite everyone to prepare use case(s) 10-15 min - have the option of doing this on paper format (or online for those online, in nextcloud, use a QR code to access) (make the document open access in case not everyone has sorted access)

Part 3: Review a new use case from a volunteer, live, whole group, 15 min

Part 4: discussion - what next? ask how these Use Cases relate to the aims of Butterfly, especially the idea of “stewardship” of pollinators.

(save 3 min to show current GloBI map and DoPI

map to ask for data from underrepresented countries)- maybe in the WP1 session instead?
Jeff: Alternative suggestion to send everyone a link to all of the Use Cases and then discuss how they relate to the aims of Butterfly.

Claus: Will people actually do the work in advance?

New plan:
In the session for WP1 in day 1: hand out all use cases that we have and ask people to have a look in preparation for EuroAPPA workshop in day 2

Finn can run the workshop in the room

Workshop Part 1: Introduction with slides: 10 min (Cala prepares first version and shares)
What is EuroAPPA
What it will do (and won’t)
Show what a use case and how to prepare a use case
Show a good example, maybe also a bad one (fake)

Part 2: Invite everyone to prepare use case(s) to fill the gaps - 10-15 min - have the option of doing this on paper format (or online for those online, in nextcloud, use a QR code to access) (make the document open access in case not everyone has sorted access)

Part 3: discussion 15- min. what next? ask how these Use Cases relate to the aims of Butterfly, especially the idea of “stewardship” of pollinators.

(save 3 min to show current GloBI map and DoPI map to ask for data from underrepresented countries)- maybe in the WP1 session instead? Nilgun: Not sure if there will be time for it in WP1 workshop.

Presented at the 17-19 Nov 2025 kick-off meeting in Freising, Germany of the EU Horizon’s ProPollSoil project “Understanding and managing soil health impacts to protect soil-dependent pollinators”
Poelen, J. H. (2025, November 17). Fairy Tales and Digital Research Data hash://md5/74cabb19c6dcf3e2eea27a38acf4fb76. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17625448

Jan 8, 2026

Attendees - Cala, Nick, Jeff, Jorrit

Agenda
Method of Review DoPI
Review Jorrit’s notes on DoPI
Discuss Next Steps

Notes

Current method of review - Nick sent a sample of the DoPI dataset by email to Jorrit and asked feedback on the terms used. Some time later, Nick also shared a larger dataset that included EU part of the DoPI data. Both datasets where shard in XLSX (or csv?) format.

Jorrit, Nick, Jeff and Cala reviewed the DOPI column definitions. Jorrit shared an annotated version of the column definitions. See notes below.

— email exchange Jan 8th 2026 on DoPI terminology:

Nick had written: “Cala and I thought that it may be a good idea to run our updated terms for DoPI past you before we finalise them - if you have the time of course! Please find attached a snippet of the DoPI dataset and sheet with the terms/definitions/examples etc. Any input at this stage would be very much appreciated.”

Jorrit’s reply:
I see the act standardization of datasets like DoPI as a translation of their native format (e.g., xlsx) into some other format (e.g., DwC) with a specific goal in mind (e.g., increase visibility, access, facilitate reuse).

And, I know that most native datasets are perfectly able to express exactly what is needed for the project, whatever works, works. However, some think that the native format and some standardized view on them should be perfectly aligned. And this is often where analysis paralysis sets in (at least for me!). So, my preferred approach would be something like:

1. describe, version, and publish the data in the way that *you* and your colleagues use it currently, submit for internal review

2. when appropriate, choose which platforms you’d like to register with (e.g., GBIF, GloBI, GitHub, CodeBerg, Zenodo).

3. once you’ve chosen the platform you’d like to share your datasets with, implement a method to translate your native data into a format that works for the target platform

Sometimes, I see folks getting stuck on 2. and 3. for so long that they are unable to publish the data in their native form, let alone some standardized format of it. Also, some manage to put a ton of time into conforming to some kind of standard, only to delay use of the data by peers. A silly extreme example of this would be that, after tons of effort, you help create a first (internal) release of a perfectly standardize DoPI dataset in Nov 2029, leaving Joe and colleagues unable to use it for modeling before the end of the Butterfly project.

In other words, I am a fan of reviewing versioned copies of datasets early and often. In my mind, a dataset is only as good as the ability for your peers to reuse and review it.

Nick/Cala clarified that what we want is confirmation that the terms we are using for the columns in DoPI (based on Darwin Core terminology, Jorrit calls this “inspired by” which is probably more accurate) make sense and will be good for being translated into different formats by GloBI.

We went through the current table and discussed specific topics including, but not limited to, specifying the role of the subj/obj of the interaction in the column name (e.g., taxonID -> sourceTaxonId). Also we discussed the difference between a term-type (e.g., dwc:scientificName) and a column value of a certain type (e.g., value Apis mellifera in sourceTaxonName column is of type dwc:scientificName) . Jeff also brought up some ideas on describing the evidence pollination “success” (flower visitation, carried pollen, etc) visitand their relation to the “quality” of the data record. the

Jorrit sent annotated xslx including the notes on the column definitions by email.
Next steps are for Nick/Cala to review these ideas and share how their are planning to inrcorporate this into the DoPI column specifications share their to for Nick file s notes.

— email exchange Dec 2025 - Jan 2026 about EU DoPI notes - between Nick / Jorrit
0. Thanks again for sharing your (massive!) new dataset with . . . wow you guys have been busy growing from 100k to over 300k records!
I sent over only the European dataset. So, it did not include the original UK data, so we now have >450k records (or rows) in total now - and still growing. Please do not make this data or any reviews publicly accessible, until we upload the new data in early 2026.

1. The name ‘‘EuroDoPI_Export 08.12.25.csv’ seems to suggest that the dataset is derived from something else. What is the origin of this data? Some XLSX?

Yes, this is an export from an .xlsx file, the data is curated and managed in this format.

2. The date stamp in ‘EuroDoPI_Export 08.12.25.csv’ suggests that versioning is done by filename. What is your versioning and release strategy strategy currently?

Yes, the versioning is done by filename, as generally it is for my use only. The data currently on the website and that associated with the Ecology (2022) paper are version 1.0 and as we will likely upload (to the DoPI website and Zenodo) a few subsequent versions throughout the course Butterfly. Before we release the version 2.0 we need to change a few things on the website and finalise our terms.

3. the name in ‘EuroDoPI_Export 08.12.25.csv’ seems to suggest that there’s now two datasets - DoPI and EuroDoPI. What is the relationship between the DoPI and EuroDoPI datasets ?

Yes, I have kept the UK-only data (DoPI) and the pan-European dataset (EuroDoPI) separate for just now, and only merge them for analysis and will do so again when I upload the new dataset to the website.

4. Who contributed to the compilation dataset? Who should I contact in case I have issues?

It’s a mixture of contributed datasets and data taken straight from the literature (or publicly-accessible associated datasets). If I were to share the contact details of data contributors I would want to seek their permission to do so first. Is this necessary?

5. Where can I find a description of the methods used to compile (Euro)DoPI?

This will be completed when we prepare a paper announcing the new dataset later in 2026.

6. Where can I find a description of the headers? (I do realize that this was available in the XLSX snippet you shared some time ago).

Again, the shared file was not designed for public consumption or for sharing, but are only used to curate and manage the data. As such the headers do not exactly match the format of the .csv files that are downloadable via the database website. Please see my previous comment about finalising headers before any reviewing.

7. Currently, the website at https://www.sussex.ac.uk/lifesci/ebe/dopi/ offers an interactive search to create subsets of the DoPI database/dataset, and the Balfour et al. 2022 paper is set to contain the whole dataset in a data appendix. Does this mean that the website has not been updated since 2022? How can I verify whether the dataset associated with the website is actually the one hosted by the journal “Ecology” ?

Yes, at the moment it is not possible to download the entire dataset from the website. We may change that. I will discuss with Cala. The website code has been updated several times since 2022, but not the dataset. You can verify that the data on the website and Ecology are the same, but you would have to download the data from the website in a couple of chunks I guess.

8. You expressed a desire to align your data/schema with biodiversity data standards such as the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) and DarwinCore Archive (DwC-A). If you’d like, I can show you how to provide an eml file and meta.xml to help wrap your data in such that infrastructures like GBIF, DataOne, GloBI can read/interpret (part of) your data.

That would be great, thanks Jorrit. However, what are your thoughts on just providing a JSON-LD, do you think this would be sufficient?

9.In the data, columns “Paper.ID” and “DOI” appear to refer to the literature/dataset that makes the transcribed claim. Do you have a secondary table that include the bibliographic information about the paper. Also, for consistency, I’d suggest to rename “DOI” to “Paper.DOI” following the naming convention used in “Paper.ID” .

Again, this is just the format the data are curated and managed in, and these column headers do not match those that appear in the .csv files that are publicly accessible from the website. I am very happy to follow the recommendations set out below, but strongly feel we need to finalise the headers before doing so.

Recommendations

From these questions / notes, I’d suggest to do the following:

At the minimum, when sharing a dataset for review, suggest to:

R1. include a README with a text-based description of the data origin / structure / methods.

R2. include original xslx (if available)

R3. include provide csv exports for relevant sheets in the xlsx and describe how you converted these files.

R4. include a history in the README, noting the date / version of the data and short description of the changes

R5. if you do choose to continue to embed dates/version in a filename, suggest to also include copies with a stable name, using ISO8601 dates (e.g., 2025-10-08 instead of 8.12.2025 or similar).

e.g.,

README-2025-10-08.txt

dopi-2025-10-08.xlsx

dopi-data-2025-10-08.csv

dopi-refs-2025-10-08.csv

along with

README.txt

dopi.xlsx

dopi-data.csv

dopi-refs.csv

where the xlsx and csv files have different names but same content. Having a stable filename makes it easier for scripts or other automated workflows to reuse your data.

R6. After data release, offer a full data download from the website, perhaps linking to the data hosted on Zenodo or whatever platform/publisher you choose to disseminate the data.

extra credit R7. Add a eml.xml and meta.xml along with your data files to align your data with EML/DwC-A standards and facilitate indexing by GBIF, GloBI etc

Jan 6, 2026

Attendees - Cala, Nilgun, Claus, Nick, Jeff, Finn, Jorrit, Joe

Agenda to discuss -

(please add agenda ideas)
Cala - approve draft here: https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/gdtwJsfTddCXd85?dir=/\&editing=false\&openfile=true#h-invitation-to-provide-a-use-case-for-euroappa
And Ok that Cala manages this request to stakeholders

Jorrit - suggest to pick one yet-to-be reviewed EuroAPPA use case for review see https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/gdtwJsfTddCXd85?dir=/\&editing=false\&openfile=true (with previous)

Jorrit - go over readily available data review to go over from https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/euroappa/#Dataset-Review with an emphasis on the packaging and structure of datasets like - EU Pollinator Hub, DoPI, BeeFunc, and EuPPollNet .

Jorrit - pick a spatial extent to delineate geo-locations in EuroAPPA scope and out of EuroAPPA scope. (are the administrative regions associated with UK and Republic of Ireland in or out of scope of EuroAPPA?)

Butterfly AGM EuroAPPA presentation

Notes

Cala - about the draft email on requesting use cases. We agreed that she could send out the draft email and, in some cases, ask us to approach individuals.

Nilgun asks - Can we talk about Butterfly AGM (January 2026 Aarhus) EuroAPPA presentation, please?
Cala - we have 45 (16:00 - 16:45 CET) minutes on 29 January 2026 for a use case workshop. Cala and Jorrit will run the session, including data request for DoPI - using map Nick put together showing the spatial extent of DoPI

Jorrit - I’d love to very much to repeat Nick’s work on the datasets currently indexed by GloBI (plant visitation / pollination in some to be determined geographic extend)

Nick - shares the map of geographic points of species interactions reported in DoPI (both UK and European)

Jorrit - suggests to do a data review of DoPI to help establish a way to put DoPI into context of other

Cala / Jeff - note gaps in the Polish and Spanish areas (not that data don’t exist, but a matter of getting it).

Claus - asks how are points on the map are calculated. Nick replies that some studies report centroids of the countries, whereas others are more specific.

Jeff - Polish studies are single plant level studies. But Marcin Zych may be able to provide unpublished data. Cala will also contact Jakub Štenc (currently at Lund U) who has also been involved in community studies. Also, here’s an urban network from Poland: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11829-013-9274-z

Joe - Surprised we also don’t have more records for Norway: The Sogndal record is probably from Stein Joar and I guess the Hardanger record is from the APPLECORe project. We definitely have access to a lot more records though: I can pressgang my PhDs and Master’s students to share it on DoPI and that alone should close some of the gaps

Jorrit discusses review of DoPI here:
Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). Versioned Archive and Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found within globalbioticinteractions/dopi hash://md5/5092adc224b66f397c752f6f2071ed53. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16416445
Generate PDF to see all details of the review: there are lists of top pollinators and plants but maps are missing. Location data is available but is not used. Jorrit plans to add this to reviews (see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/1134)

Cala: Is it possible to include the quality of interaction in the review? This is

Jorrit: I can try creating those maps and we can compare. It would be interesting to see differences between data sets, how they measure the quality of interaction.

Jeff: Is a pollination data quality review included?

Discussion referring to: Ollerton, J., Taliga, C., Salim, J.A., Poelen, J.H., & Drucker, D.P. (2025) Incorporating measures of data quality into plant-pollinator databases. Journal of Pollination Ecology 38: 151-160 (recommended reading)

GBIF - Global Biodiversity Information Facility

@Nick B - here’s an urban network from Poland: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11829-013-9274-z (see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/1133 for documentation showing that associated studiy Jędrzejewska-Szmek, K., Zych, M. Flower-visitor and pollen transport networks in a large city: structure and properties. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 7, 503–516 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-013-9274-z published their data embedded in images of tables see - in other words, they took a screenshot of a table and published this as an image; To reuse the data, they have to be manually transcribed by a human.n. / machine even through the data was digitalized already) a more reusable way to publishing data would be to published the table in form of a text-based tabular data format like csv text file)

Meeting to plan the AGM workshop: 2026.01.13. At 13:00 GMT

Dec 2, 2025 -

Attendees: Cala, Jorrit, Jeff, Joe, Alex, Andrea, Finn, Laura, Claus, Jeroen, Nick, Nilgun, Noa

(for collaborative notes see below Agenda )

Agenda To discuss:

  • Andrea and Ivan - introductions and general aim of the tool they are developing (5-10 min)

  • Cala- discuss paragraph to request use cases - include maps/modelling tools (15 min)
    Jorrit - suggest to pick one yet-to-be reviewed EuroAPPA use case for review see https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/gdtwJsfTddCXd85?dir=/\&editing=false\&openfile=true (with previous)

  • Jorrit - suggest to discuss a systematic effort to review EuroAPPA related datasets (e.g., DoPI https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/780, European Pollinator Hub https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991) . I’d be curious to hear thoughts on setting up a review schedule that does not interfere too much with our monthly EuroAPPA meetings.(10 min)

  • Requirement in Butterfly of informing the consortium about intention to go to conferences and submitting publications, 45 days in advance? We were told this is the case in ProPolSoil and in many grant agreements. (Jorrit: if I remember correctly, during the ProPollSoil kick-off meeting in Freising 17-19 Nov 2025, Olaf Schmidt of University College Dublin https://people.ucd.ie/olaf.schmidt https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0098-7960 claimed that ProPollSoil agreement included a 15 day notification period for materials of type to be agreed upon by the consortium. Can you please point to the text of the agreement in which this statement is made in context of Butterfly?) (ask Nilgun?)

    • Nilgun’s answer (probably a bit too detailed because it is taken verbatim from the “Consortium Agreement”, which is a standard agreement signed by all consortium members after the project is granted by the EU.). Please read Section 8 Results. I copied the whole section below.
      8 Results
      8.1 Ownership of Results
      Results are owned by the Party that generates them.
      8.2 Joint ownership
      Joint ownership is governed by Grant Agreement Article 16.4 and its Annex 5, Section Ownership of results, with the following additions:
      Unless otherwise agreed:
      − each of the joint owners shall be entitled to use their jointly owned Results for non-commercial research and teaching activities on a royalty-free basis, and without requiring the prior consent of the other joint owner(s).
      − each of the joint owners shall be entitled to otherwise Exploit the jointly owned Results and to grant non-exclusive licenses to third parties (without any right to sub-license), if the other joint owners are given: (a) at least 45 calendar days advance notice; and (b) fair and reasonable compensation.
      The joint owners shall agree on all protection measures and the division of related cost in advance.
      8.3 Transfer of Results
      Each Party may transfer ownership of its own Results, including its share in jointly owned Results, following the procedures of the Grant Agreement Article 16.4 and its Annex 5, Section Transfer and licensing of results, sub-section “Transfer of ownership”.
      Each Party may identify specific third parties it intends to transfer the ownership of its Results to in Attachment (3) of this Consortium Agreement. The other Parties hereby waive their right to prior notice and their right to object to such a transfer to listed third parties according to the Grant Agreement Article 16.4 and its Annex 5, Section Transfer of licensing of results, sub-section “Transfer of ownership”, 3rd paragraph.
      The transferring Party shall, however, at the time of the transfer, inform the other Parties of such transfer and shall ensure that the rights of the other Parties under the Consortium Agreement and the Grant Agreement will not be affected by such transfer. Any addition to Attachment (3) after signature of this Consortium Agreement requires a decision of the General Assembly.
      The Parties recognise that in the framework of a merger or an acquisition of an important part of its assets, it may be impossible under applicable EU and national laws on mergers and acquisitions for a Party to give at least 45 calendar days prior notice for the transfer as foreseen in the Grant Agreement.
      The obligations above apply only for as long as other Parties still have - or still may request - Access Rights to the Results.
      8.4 Dissemination
      For the avoidance of doubt, the confidentiality obligations set out in Section 10 apply to all dissemination activities described in this Section 8.4 as far as Confidential Information is involved.
      Dissemination of own (including jointly owned) Results
      During the Project and for a period of 1 year after the end of the Project, the dissemination of own Results by one or several Parties including but not restricted to publications and presentations, shall be governed by the procedure of Article 17.4 of the Grant Agreement and its Annex 5, Section Dissemination, subject to the following provisions.
      Prior notice of any planned publication shall be given to the other Parties at least 45 calendar days before the publication. Any objection to the planned publication shall be made in accordance with the Grant Agreement by written notice to the Coordinator and to the Party or Parties proposing the dissemination within 30 calendar days after receipt of the notice. If no objection is made within the time limit stated above, the publication is permitted.
      By exception to the 45 calendar days’ notice, the prior notice period shall be reduced to 21 calendar days only for the following dissemination activities: poster presentations, slides and abstracts for oral presentations at scientific meetings. In this case, any objection to the planned dissemination shall be made in writing to the Coordinator and to the Party or Parties proposing the dissemination within 10 calendar days after receipt of the notice. If no objection is made within the time limit stated above, the dissemination is permitted.
      An objection is justified if
      a) the protection of the objecting Party’s Results or Background would be adversely affected, or
      b) the objecting Party’s legitimate interests in relation to its Results or Background would be significantly harmed, or
      c) the proposed publication includes Confidential Information of the objecting Party.
      The objection has to include a precise request for necessary modifications.
      If an objection has been raised the involved Parties shall discuss how to overcome the justified grounds for the objection on a timely basis (for example by amendment to the planned publication and/or by protecting information before publication) and the objecting Party shall not unreasonably continue the opposition if appropriate measures are taken following the discussion.
      The objecting Party can request a publication delay of not more than 60 calendar days from the time it raises such an objection. After 60 calendar days the publication is permitted, provided that the objections of the objecting Party have been addressed.
      Dissemination of another Party’s unpublished Results or Background
      A Party shall not include in any dissemination activity another Party’s Results or Background without obtaining the owning Party’s prior written approval, unless they are already published.
      Cooperation obligations
      The Parties undertake to cooperate to allow the timely submission, examination, publication and defense of any dissertation or thesis for a degree that includes their Results or Background subject to the confidentiality and publication provisions agreed in this Consortium Agreement.
      Use of names, logos or trademarks
      Nothing in this Consortium Agreement shall be construed as conferring rights to use in advertising, publicity or otherwise the name of the Parties or any of their logos or trademarks without their prior written approval.

    • Section 10 on Confidential Information:
      10 Non-disclosure of information
      All information in whatever form or mode of communication, which is disclosed by a Party (the “Disclosing Party”) to any other Party (the “Recipient”) in connection with the Project during its implementation and which has been explicitly marked as “confidential” or “sensitive” at the time of disclosure, or when disclosed orally has been identified as confidential at the time of disclosure and has been confirmed and designated in writing within 15 calendar days from oral disclosure at the latest as confidential information by the Disclosing Party, is “Confidential Information”.

  • Schedule a second meeting in January

Notes

Started with a quick introduction of the new people in the group.
Andrea - working with Ivan (UGent) and Paolo (UNIMIB).
Finn: WP6 - literature review and Butterfly website - replacing Harry (UiB).
Alex - ProPollSoil communications, colleagues from ProPollSoil were integrated in the group, cause the project will use also EuroAPPA.

Cala suggest to use Andrea and Ivan’s plans as part of EuroAPPA capabilities to request use cases.

Andrea - no beta version yet, combining crop maps with pollinator “supply” maps on the European area.
2 deliverables:
D1) Interactive maps of pollination supply and demand
D2) tool for farmers and gardeners (select area, ask for goal (conservation or crop?), provide species pool from user selection


Joe - new pollinator monitoring regulations - published 26 Nov 2025 - New EU pollinator monitoring regulations: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202502188 : Ideally our tools should ideally be able to provide predictions at the scale relevant to this new legislation. - Would it be an idea to design the tool to help member states align with these regulations. Picking a suitable spatial resolution and taxonomic resolution would help align with these regulations.

Noa - we shouldn’t use “the data generated by the EUPoMs (link shared by Joe above)” related to the pollinator monitoring schemes run by the member states because they won’t be available any time soon.

Cala - Is the tool geared towards crop pollinators? Andrea - tool 1. yes, tool 2. both crop and wild pollinators.
From Jeff: JPE has published an exchange of opinions about the EU Pollinator Monitoring - see the last two articles here: https://www.pollinationecology.org/index.php/jpe/issue/view/72

Cala - do you imagine EuroAPPA to host the tools you are developing? Andrea - not sure. Also this website to https://pollinatorhub.eu/

Cala - Highlights the existence of BeeFall database on missing data on wild bee data - https://github.com/lmar116/BeeFall interactive link: lmar116.shinyapps.io/BeeFall/ (jorrit: after meeting I created https://github.com/lmar116/BeeFall/issues/1)

Cala - switching to EuroAPPA use cases https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/gdtwJsfTddCXd85?dir=/\&editing=false\&openfile=true

Andrea: Eurocrop map 2022 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03884-y) currently the best crop-map at the EU level I could find. I am actively looking for better resolution of crop types.

Alex - will the email be translated to different languages - Cala - for now - the target audience is internal WP folks of Butterfly (and ProPollSoil?).

Jeff - suggest to not include all use cases when soliciting for use case input to avoid copy-paste and to get people to consider potential use cases with fresh eyes: maximum of two in the email.

Nilgun - we want people to come up with their own ideas - providing many existing examples may influence and reduce creativity. Would it be an idea to use the general assembly to solicit feedback ? EuroAPPA will have a 30min slot. Link to 28-30.01.2026 2026-01-28/30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 Aarhus meeting agenda https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/RkMGfkYqaq5dbc7 .

Joe - do we need extra time for WP1 (includes EuroAPPA?) like a workshop to develop EuroAPPA related work.

Here’s the link to https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/index.php/s/gdtwJsfTddCXd85?dir=/\&editing=false\&openfile=true#h-invitation-to-provide-a-use-case-for-euroappa

Cala - suggests to have a second meeting to perhaps conduct reviews.

Jeroen - good to diversify the views on how EuroAPPA is/might be used. Good to have a list of items to address in a review (usecase / data) . Also, wonders about how the soil and microgradients of landscapes in ProPollSoil context. https://zeeland.butterfly-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Lezing-CLM-Bestuivers-kopie.pdf

Cala - yes, we are planning to include a soil angle via ProPollSoil .
Noa - I think we should figure out what would be the added value of EuroAPPA, something essential people can find there. For documents we already have the Pollinator Academy: https://pollinatoracademy.eu/ For data repository there is the EU Pollinator Hub (https://app.pollinatorhub.eu) or GLOBI (Jorrit shared link in notes); for one use case (interactions, there is DOPI-https://www.sussex.ac.uk/lifesci/ebe/dopi/about and GLOBI).

Nilgun - There is also an option to exchange EuroAPPA spot with Ethics workshop spot later on the same day. If Laura agrees. That would give 45 minutes for the EuroAPPA workshop. Agree?

Jeroen - (in Dutch) https://clm-onderzoek-en-advies.email-provider.eu/web/kiienyakpk/dql5jw2ltb?lp-t=1762870726

Nilgun - when is the next meeting? 2026-01-06 or 6 Jan 2026.

Nov 4, 2025
Attendees: Claus, Laura, Jeff, Jorrit

Meeting link -
https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/88481803967?pwd=YefXyNBceh80e1Z4p6i2XBdmQPFQbq.1

Notes -

Claus is still planning to share his updated literature corpus on bees (wide spectrum - from identification to ecology).

Jeff’s experience with last use case review - useful exercise to go through the details of EuroAPPA use - imaging use from a particular perspective and systematic approach to capture these. I am thinking about using it for other projects.

Claus shared a use case on homeowners seeking bee friendly plants “Use Case 6 - Citizen or Gardener”

Jeff suggests to ask Cala for scheduling the next meeting. By default, we keep the regular monthly, unless Cala says otherwise.

Oct 15, 2025

Attendees: Cala, Joe, Jeff, Jorrit

Notes - Agenda items for next meeting (7/10/25) - 14:00 UK Time (15:00 CET)

Meeting link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/6388674885?pwd=Q3VxQnlQWWpjQmt2MTZ6K3RVbFVOUT09

For annual meeting in Aarhus, we are being asked if we need time for a plenary. We are not sure who of us will be there, but we will request time anyway because we can run a workshop online. The aim would be to get input for EuroAPPA from all potential stakeholders.

Joe warns that we might need lots of time for WP1 discussions in that meeting, so we might need to coordinate in advance and have a full WP1 meeting online. This reminded Jorrit of the Use Case that he has put in regarding communication.

Next:
1. standardize use case format (Jeff volunteered)
2. decide on which existing use cases to share
3. prepare existing e.g., the Master student and EFSA use case
4. send the existing use cases as examples for others to add or review
5. asks specific folks to review: Noa (policy research), Robin Weijers, bioinformatics (e.g., Jorrit, GBIF, …)

Next meeting - 4 November 2025 - continue reviewing use cases.

Email addresses for Butterfly communication: (from Nilgun in June 2025)
[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

Butterfly.consortium list does not include our Advisory Board members, nor the EU advisor. I listed them below in case you like your message to reach them as well.

Name email
Robin Weijers [email protected]
Lorenzo Benini [email protected]
Ângela Guimarães Pereira [email protected]
Alexandra-Maria Klein [email protected]
Tatiana Tallarico (EU advisor) [email protected]

Discussion of the different use cases followed. Including a discussion of assumptions of data quality/completeness.

Oct 7, 2025 | EuroAPPA monthly

Attendees: Cala, Noa, Jeff, Nick, Jeroen,Jorrit, Andres

Notes - Agenda items for next meeting (7/10/25) - 14:00 UK Time (15:00 CET)

Meeting link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/6388674885?pwd=Q3VxQnlQWWpjQmt2MTZ6K3RVbFVOUT09

Action items

  • Jeroen/Nilgun/Laura - Publish in Zenodo and our website all the publications of the deliverables is 4 formats: .docx, .pdf, .md, odt
  • All - Do some Use Cases, each of us
  • Next meeting - 15/10/2025. 16:00 (CET)

2025-09-17 EuroAPPA meeting re: SafeHub Review

Attendees: Cala, Nilgun, Jorrit, Jeff, with apologies from Joe.

Agenda Items:
* Review SafeHub in context of future EuroAPPA design/user interface
(e.g., see Jorrit’s initial look as shared by email sent on 2025-09-02, also below)
* EuroAPPA design and review strategy (e.g., roadmap, development methodology)

Desired EuroAPPA Requirements

**Non-functional \-**

/ should last beyond the lifetime of the EU Horizon Butterfly project

/ maintain a list of use cases / user stories and their associations what we promised in WP1 (EuroAPPA) Atlas of Plant Pollinator Associations /

// User Stories -

(1) What kind of native plants should Jeroen plant in his backyard in Bergen, Norway to help native pollinators? (Jeroen tried to find an answer in https://safeguard-pollinators.eu/distribution-map and failed to find which pollinators are found in western Norway)

(2) What pollinates Rapeseed in Poland vs. Germany vs. France? (we need this in WP4 for the biomass energy supply chain vulnerability assessment)

(3) When creating evidence for policy change, which interactions / plant-pollinator communities inhabit specific locations and do we have evidence of change over time?

(4) How would the European Environment Agency use EuroAPPA? (Lorenzo Benini, IAB) (e.g. for reports such as https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/protecting-and-restoring-europes-wild-pollinators-and-their-habitats )

(5) How would IPBES use EuroAPPA for the second global assessment (first here: https://www.ipbes.net/global-assessment )

/ In EuroAPPA we will focus on reusing two existing systems: DoPI and tools within GloBI, plus add results from modelling and mapping exercises in WP1 (we don’t aim to build new infrastructures to help support functionality we need, except what we need for the modelling results).

/ We need representatives of stakeholders to decide on what the interface will look like

/ be interfacing with humans as well as machines to allow for automated workflows

/ the atlas itself should be citable such that derived results can be reproduced

Functional - (for scientists) spreadsheet for common species Bumbus lucorum geospatial-temporal coordinates / link to soil databases relevant for a specific plant-pollinator geospatial-temporal context

User groups - “scientists”, “someone interested in pollinators”, “policy makers”, “gardeners/food growers”, “environmental agencies”, NGOs (eg. buglife, Bumblebee Conservation Trust)

Strategy - try to focus on specific use cases tied to our work packages.

Out-of-scope for EuroAPPA, but in-scope for BUTTERFLY -
discovery of social science data (fits better in pollinatorhub.eu and in Butterfly’s web portal (https://butterfly-europe.eu/))

Cala’s notes on SafeHub previous to meeting:
We think VALOR will use SafeHub as a one-stop-shop. We are taking a look at its current contents (but note that VALOR started this year, like Butterfly)

SafeHub pros as one-stop-shop:

  • Idea of directing visitors by “need” is good (but see below)
  • Collection of initiatives and projects is useful
  • User-friendly look

Cons:

  • Safe-Hub – not the most informative name – I guess we’ll have a similar problem
  • Knowledge library just has project outputs (so useful internally mostly) – similar to “Safeguard outputs”
  • Some links are empty, like the “national pollinator strategies”
  • “How to help pollinators” section is very superficial

Jeff’s notes on SafeHub previous to meeting:

  • Perhaps a little wordy & academic in tone in places.
  • Distribution maps very interesting, though could give more details of the output. Also the country search doesn’t seem to work, e.g. no records for UK. Also doesn’t work for some taxa, e.g. common Bombus species.
  • I like the way that information is filtered by stakeholder, i.e academic, policy maker, etc.
  • Some pages have no information, e.g. National pollinator strategies.

2025-09-02 Jorrit’s Initial Look at SafeHub

From: Jorrit Poelen
Sent: 02 September 2025 18:28

Hey Cala et al.

Here’s some of my preliminary notes on SafeHub

1. consists of informational non-peer non-peer-reviewed content

2. provides access to a human-searchable list of publications, with only one marked as “dataset”. As far as I know, no machine readable way to extract data or references list is available

3. provides (as noted by Joe) a map and search to visualize occurrences of pollinators as recorded in GBIF

4. links to a Pensoft Publication Collection https://riojournal.com/topical_collection/229 in the Journal Research Ideas and Outcomes. In this collection, only authors are provided when downloading the reference list in RIS / bibtex format (see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/989#issuecomment-3246133857) .

Overall, as far as I can tell, the “one stop shop” as currently implemented by SafeHub is a list of references along with a search widget that taps into GBIFs Web APIs. And, re-using the results of this requires manual work (e.g., reading articles, clicking on buttons etc).

Question for Cala, Jeff, Joe, Noa, Jeroen etc:

Q1. How would you like to collect these review notes in a systematic way similar to journals collect review notes? I imagine that these review notes can serve as data points similar to how questionnaires can.

Q2. Are these the kinds of meeting notes that you had in mind?

Please let me know how you’d like to proceed.

-jorrit

————

2025-09-02 3pm CET monthly EuroAPPA meeting

Attendees: Cala, Noa, Jorrit, Joe, Jeff

Proposed Agenda Items:

1. EuroAPPA user interface planning

  • Who to involve in design:

    already in team: Jorrit, Jeff, Nick, Cala, Noa, Jeroen, Joe
    representing the different endusers: ??

  • Where will it be hosted?

    • For European projects and security issues, normally, the host should be European.
  • What is the aim of a user interface? How does this integrate with existing user interfaces (e.g., scholarly communication protocols, journals, existing websites, etc.)

Jorrit points out that webpages are short-lived, so we shouldn’t spend too much time designing something fancy.

Noa suggests reusing existing resources and using Butterfly to promote them.

Jeff suggests we go back to basics and decide who the stakeholders are that will be using EuroAPPA AND look back at what we promised in the Butterfly proposal. Regarding hosting, JO suggested the European Commission. Noa said that the EC will host it but not maintain it.

Jorrit can help with the portal, but we need to clarify the content. Are we building a static resource? A fancy webpage?

Jorrit suggests we create a wikipedia page with the content we expect. JO concerned (from bitter experience!) that the level of gatekeeping at Wikipedia may mean that a EuroAPPA page never gets accepted. Jorrit thinks it’s still worthwhile to get feedback from the Wikigoblins. JO sceptical…

Noa suggests that everybody present their vision of what EuroAPPA should be, including the tools’ functionalities, end-users, interaction with data, etc.

Jorrit suggests evaluating the Safeguard to see what things are to be kept/inspired for EuroAPPA-


Joe - this is how the ‘distribution’ maps look for pollinators in Safe-Hub. Looking at the code it is served using a javascript call to GBIF’s mapping API and then visualised using the maptiler plugin. I can imagine having a species page that has modelled distribution outputs (to account for known distributional biases in raw occurrence data) with information relating to plant-pollinator network at locations.

Jeff - I’d see it not just as something which is “used” immediately by “users”, but also as an archive of information/data that will be useful for other, as yet unidentified “users” in the future.
For example, understanding how interactions might change over time - can the data be used 100 years in the future when Europe has a very different climate, for instance.

2. Data reviews
BeeFunc Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). Versioned Archive and Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found within globalbioticinteractions/beefunc hash://md5/4ddec69134bf17d4de2b8db8a4337879. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16739585
EUPollinatorHub Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). Versioned Archive and Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found within globalbioticinteractions/eupollinatorhub hash://md5/20cf2922b53db5bd9c055e4b4e0955ec. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16989967

3. DoPIs relation to other datasets
Using DoPI as a way to measure overlap (literature, taxonomic, geographic) with other datasets (e.g., BeeFunc, EUPollinatorHub)

Notes

Talking about pesticides - limitations of current knowledge about when to spray. Should something about pesticides be added to EuroAPPA? Possible agenda item for a later meeting?
Discussion of lacewings as pollinators - JO suggested recent work that includes references to lacewings:

Peris, D., Ollerton, J., Sauquet, H., Hidalgo, O., Peñalver, E., Magrach, A., Álvarez-Parra, S., Peña-Kairath, C., Condamine, F.L., Delclòs, X. & Pérez-de la Fuente, R. (2025) Evolutionary implications of a deep-time perspective on insect pollination. Biological Reviews (in press).

Ollerton, J. (2025) What are the phylogenetic limits to pollinator diversity? Journal of Applied Entomology 149: 697–703.

Peña-Kairath, C., Delclòs, X., Álvarez-Parra, S., Peñalver, E., Engel, M.S., Ollerton, J. & Peris, D. (2023) Insect pollination in deep time. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 38: 749-759.

https://www.safeguard.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/Project/SafeHub.aspx - The one-stop-shop for VALOR is the one for Safeguard, SafeHub
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/pollinators_en - another one-stop-shop .

##

2025-08-04 3pm CET monthly EuroAPPA meeting
Cala, Jorrit, Noa & Jeff

For this meeting:

  • Review Data extracted from Pollinator Hub API as seen from GloBI’s perspective

https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991
Jorrit was unable to access the EU Pollinator datasets using an automated process in EU Pollinator Hub, https://app.pollinatorhub.eu/ .

https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/1091

Aubouin, L., Genoud, D., Givord-Coupeau, B. et al. BeeFunc, a comprehensive trait database for French bees. Sci Data 12, 1302 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05626-0

Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). Versioned Archive and Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found within globalbioticinteractions/beefunc hash://md5/0ad3a2c80410def6afcaceeddb88fba9. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16738113

How does Aubouin et al. 2025 overlap with Nick’s Checklist of EU plant/Pollinator?
How does this overlap with GloBI?
How does this overlap with EU Pollinator Hub?
How does this overlap with DOPI?

What does overlap mean?

Shared taxonomic names/references?
Shared data sources?
Shared researchers?
Similar geospatial ranges (localities, ecoregions)?

When discussing data readability for review (e.g. in GloBi) we considered how to share guidelines for good practice for data collectors who don´t have much experience in publishing accessible datasets – we can aim to create and share these guidelines as the result of what we learn from compiling and reviewing datasets in EuroAPPA.

From Jeff: issues around interpretation of what is “FAIR”, or even what words like “Accessible” really mean - they have different connotations depending upon context/interpretation.

For next meeting:

  • Start discussion on what EuroAPPA’s interface should be like- who should be involved in this addition to us? (Noa and coms colleagues in BeeLife, Aye can help with accessibility to general public and other stakeholders)

2025-07-04 4pm CET monthly EuroAPPA meeting

Participants: Jeff, Jeroen, Jorrit, Cala, Nick, Aye, Claus, Noa

Agenda:
- updates on project deliverable
- DoPI review
- Plazi collaboration

Notes:

Jeroen: Our website is live since 30 Jun - https://butterfly-europe.eu
(If you have content to contribute to the website or want to change text there, mail Harry [email protected] )

Deliverable D8.1 has been officially delivered in the EU portal:
https://butterfly-europe.eu/en/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Butterfly_D8_point_1_final_submitted.pdf

Noa: Asking for feedback on deliverable 8.2 (Dissemination, Exploitation, Communication and Engagement (DECE) Plan) due on 31 Aug 2025.

D8.2 - DECE Plan draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jJNZudBBbjZ2uu2dGdiPVs9FEFNp8biWzH5KY0s8Xow/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.50xi76uhz9jz

Presentation summary of DECE Plan status quo: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uhKrQ-pwQhomDuFVYi1Ey97LjfxUJLrHvaXBncg7Ez8/edit?usp=sharing

Noa: API for Pollinator Hub is ready for indexing in GloBI.
Documentation here: https://app.pollinatorhub.eu/api/documentation ([email protected] let me know if you have any issues using it) (ed. Jorrit: https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991#issuecomment-3036622027)

Jorrit showed us the review of DoPI generated by GloBI and how it can detect useful aspects to improve, e.g. name of Bombus leucorum complex, etc

Noa: Can GloBi also extract the metadata of the studies, including the information about the methodology that was followed to create the dataset?
Jorrit: Not yet, but it is an interesting conversation to have.

Here’s the GloBI review of the Ollerton Covid dataset - https://zenodo.org/records/15211837

Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). A Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found in globalbioticinteractions/ollerton2022 hash://md5/78ac6170f368b222a1c505fd24a860ca. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15211837

https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/?accordingTo=globi%3Aglobalbioticinteractions%2Follerton2022\&interactionType=ecologicallyRelatedTo

For next meeting:

  • Review Data extracted from Pollinator Hub API as seen from GloBI’s perspective
  • Start discussion on what EuroAPPA’s interface should be like- who should be involved in this addition to us? (Noa and coms colleagues in BeeLife, Aye can help with accessibility to general public and other stakeholders)

2025-07-04 3pm CET EuroAPPA <> Plazi collaboration specific

Participants: Jeff, Jeroen, Jorrit, Cala, Nick, Aye, Claus

Plazi (introduction from Jorrit)
aim: making scientific literature more accessible - “liberating” data buried in the literature:

  • E.g. Treatment Bank taxonomic treatments that are then integrated into the taxonomic pages in Zenodo
  • Close collaboration with Zenodo - Biodiversity Literature Repository, https://zenodo.org/communities/biosyslit/ - access to pdfs to members of the community
  • TaxoDros (database of Drosophilidae taxonomy), https://www.taxodros.uzh.ch/ with Jorrit. 20K pdfs collected by one expert over the years. Now searchable with associated metadata, deposited in Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/communities/taxodros/records?q=\&l=list\&p=1\&s=10\&sort=newest
  • anything published <2000 can be made openly accessible, anything more recent will be open to members only
  • Plazi - provides support from the biosyslit community, funds the activity and can provide the legal framework

Claus asks about access to content in the text of PDFs - Jorrit

For new projects: Jorrit advices not waiting until everything is perfect to publish

Claus - sharing his 15K PDF collection on bees and pollination.

Plazi working on Biotic explorer - mines papers to find and extract pairwise interactions

Jeff: A critical question is how are we going to decide what sources are suitable for inclusion in DoPI? We can’t manually go through 10s of thousands of references - how can we automate this? What keywords would we use?
Nick/Cala: yes, this is the next decision we need to make and getting some automatic process would be helpful
Jorrit - GloBi fills this gap to some extent

Jorrit hopes EuroAPPA can find links across datasets so that there can be links to pdfs (not only DOIs, that are not machine readable)

Nick: decisions on how to proceed in our process to populate DoPI- can we automate searches for sources that give us more than a couple of interactions.

Action: write a specific paragraph for plazi with what we want (extract pairwise interactions) and where from, to find out if they have experience with an automated way to do this. We can propose a specific task (e.g. for Jorrit using Claus’ collection) to see if they can fund it.
We could use older resources in Claus’ dataset

Knut’s old volumes have a taxonomic division that makes is a bit more challenging.

2025-06-03

Participants: Jeff, Jeroen, Jorrit, Cala, Nick

Topics to discuss today:

  • plazi collaboration
  • EuroAPPA interface
  • Rasmussen <> DoPI <> GloBI integration
  • Jeroen’s NextCloud (https://cloud.butterfly-europe.eu/ , Jeroen can give you access if you would like to test it)

Jorrit might attend Biodiversity informatics conference, TDWG in October - could be relevant for EuroAPPA
Jeff & Jorrit got sidetracked in a conversation about bookbinding…. TDWG 2025 - Book Binding for the Digital Age

Jeroen - discussion with Bergen IT - lead to the creation of a virtual linux machine on an unmanaged server, with 1TB of storage running “nextcloud” and Jorrit was able to access it using Jeroen’s instruction, also through rclone. Background - the OneDrive at UofB was causing access issues for some, and Jorrit was unable to use “rclone” .
Butterfly nextcloud server now set up but backup server still required. The system is available for testing.

Jeroen solicits some feedback - lets try and use for EuroAPPA meeting notes

EuroAPPA meeting notes data plan: use GoogleDrive/ NextCloud as a scratch pad (temporary editing environment) and have an automated workflow to take snapshot version to publish in Zenodo, Software Heritage Library etc.

Rasmussen literature collection - 15k literature in PDFs. Jorrit working with https://plazi.org to make openly accessible.
Similar efforts: Drosophila taxonomy collection: Taxodros.github.io -> https://zenodo.org/communities/taxodros This is a closed Zenodo community, that people can sign up to.
Bat Literature Project is a similar idea, PDFs came from Zotero - copyright issues?

We plan to invite Donat Agosti from plazi to our next meeting so we can talk about dealing with copyright and digitizing old literature to contribute to DoPi.

Can we link Claus’ collection to DoPI as links to the references, then have GloBi do reference alignment in a similar way as it does taxonomic alignment

Actions:

  • Test Butterfly server
  • Invite Donat to our next meeting

2025-05-06

Participants: Claus, Jeff, Laura, Jorrit, Cala

Update on Kick-off meeting - Jorrit updating EuroAPPA page in GloBI with blogs, etc

Cala - re: in preparing to update DoPI to include pollinators beyond UK to include all of Europe. Which checklist should we use? We’ll have students extracting names from literature, starting next week.

Jorrit - suggests have students use verbatim names from publications, alignment of taxonomic names is subjective, and evolves over time, so good to have original names and align later (can be automated)

Jeff - new species of bees from Europe, just published (check for pollen/nectar host plant information): https://www.mapress.com/zt/article/view/zootaxa.5631.1.3

Jorrit- alignments in resulting data sets can be done from different sources, ideally do more than once (see data reviews)

So, have students simply copy and not do any interpretation.

Cala - we are training students on data extraction, first with simple datasets (UK), then working with a readily available literature ready for transcription.

Claus - ZooTaxa may have some relevant papers.

Jorrit - asks what DoPI’s approach is for transcribing the sources, and how are you/the students going to list/ record the sources, and keep track of the ‘digital evidence’? URLs and DOIs are not permanent, no guarantees that you get the same content.
Solution for unreliable internet address: keep copy of PDFs and appendices associated with entries.

Jorrit - suggests to look into existing initiatives that have digitized literature. For instance, https://plazi.org ‘s Treatment Bank, pensoft publishes data appendices and registers them with GBIF. https://plazi.org/treatmentbank/
Q. from Jeff: Is the information in the three Knuth volumes (1906-1909?) in DoPI? (Handbook of Flower Pollination?) E.g., one article https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/349674 . (see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/1068 to open discussion with Plazi and other GloBI collaborators).

Jeff - how are you planning to verify / curate the students transcription work?

Cala - students will be given a structured way to extract the information, all will be checked before incorporating into DOPI.

Jorrit - opportunity to collaborate with plazi.org to index information in old publications (e.g. Knuth’s volumes) by giving them a good reason to do it (DoPI) - keep track of interesting publications for this

Cala- resources for feeding DoPI are limited so we’ll give priority to existing large data sets to begin with. We are working on an approach to prioritize after that

Jorrit - two parallel avenues - 1) large existing datasets from published networks and 2) locate valuable but less data-rich sources (e.g. old books) that can be indexed in collaboration with other initiatives

Jeff - how are you planning to cross-reference to ensure that resources scheduled for DoPI digitization are not already sufficiently accessed?
How are we going to assess completeness? We can use checklists for some taxonomic groups. Rarefaction analysis?

Cala- a rarefaction analysis mid-project is a great idea

Jorrit: A measure of completeness can be incorporated to the data reviews, including but not limited to a rarefaction analysis

Jorrit - asks Jeff and Cala to review the review and suggest additional items to increase reviewer satisfaction with additional information like “completeness” etc. -

Elton, Nomer, & Preston. (2025). A Review of Biotic Interactions and Taxon Names Found in globalbioticinteractions/dopi hash://md5/1b7d40fb341b374bc302b9cd74b537a5. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15191986

Checklists:
- bee checklist form Discover Life

Jeff: Cockroach pollination - https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/?interactionType=pollinates\&sourceTaxon=Blattodea . Might be an interesting subject to aim to for completeness, because there’s relatively fiew species.

2025-04-25

Participants:
Nilgun, Jeroen, Line, Jonar,

Point to discuss
IT Infrastructure needs for share
Requirement ways to share data.

Jorrit - I’d like to be able to move data (documents, data) in and out of the infrastructure we use in an automated way. I am trying to figure out how to do this with

Jonar - onedrive / google docs are intended for excel / word / pictures. Not so much for datasets ~TB

Jonar - we can offer https://nrec.no a way to setup virtual servers. These servers may be connected to storage infrastructure at the University of Bergen. Two options - 1. public access virtual machines (server hosted at the University of Bergen) 2. We did not get into the second option.

Jonar - on https://nrec.no we can run nextcloud . Connecting to the storage on the ?

Jorrit - Butterfly project does not have IT staff to maintain these servers.

Jorrit - we need roughly two things 1.

Jonar - different needs for different types of shared files, e.g., documents, assets (images, etc.), and data. Suggests: MS for documents, NREC for data

Jonar - suggests to use a OneDrive synchronization command-line tool

Line - is using an automated OneDrive synchronization running on Linux. OneDrive application. In Teams: https://github.com/abraunegg/onedrive

Sinking can be done manually when needed or set up with regular intervals.

Jonar - https://orchestrator.naic.no/ ways to create virtual machines

Jeroen - what is the free tier ?

Jonar - 2 virtual CPU with 8GB memory and 20GB storage.

Jorrit - this free tier may be sufficient to run DOPI or other partner projects.

Line and Jonar left by the end of the meeting which was scheduled for 13:30 CET (around 14:00), Jorrit, Jeroen and Nilgun continued the discussion for another 30 minutes or so.

Conclusions:

1. We do not have the technical expertise or the resources necessary to maintain servers.

2. Sync tool is an interesting option. But, OneDrive does not have capacity to store the data. It is adequate only for documents (e.g., reports, meeting minutes, etc.).

3. It is more democratic to let people work in their preferred environment, such as GDrive, OneDrive, then save the links in a document which will be updated / reviewed regularly. Links to docs, spreadsheets disappear or get lost over time. Who should take this task? Nilgun? Data manager?

2025-04-01

Participants:
Laura, Cala, Jorrit, Nuria, Claus

Point to discuss
Cala - shares a recap of the 2025-03-14 Q\&A on GloBI. EuroAPPA is a registry of existing openly available datasets associated with BUTTERFLY. EuroAPPA provides services and data products on top of

Example of report prototype at https://sandbox.zenodo.org/records/175893 .

Nuria - EuroAPPA / GloBI as a data diary . . . keeping track of data over time.
Claus - suggest to make it clear how folks can contribute, following prototype
Laura - be aware of the cross disciplinary audience (social scientists don’t use the same vocabulary)

Laura on Data Management Plan: can someone summarise plans for different types of biological data in session on DMP (Friday afternoon)?

Jorrit: suggests we use data review tools in GloBi to track different types of data and documents

From an email by Jorrit:
Two leading qualities of a storage solution are:
1. ease at which you can migrate into it (e.g., migrate from google docs to mycloud or onedrive)
2. ease at which you can migrate out of it (e.g., migrate from onedrive to mycloud)
I consider any storage solution / data publication platform as some temporary way to keep our digital assets. Also, I think an effective data management plan account for the temporary and fickle nature of these (online) storage methods by: 1. keeping many copies across different on-/offline media and 2. implement methods to synchronize across these platforms.

Cala asks for differences between social and ecological data. Laura: they can vary in complexity and how easy it is to write metadata.

For the DMP session, Laura listing all the types of data could be a good start.

2025-03-14 (Q\&A)

Note: adhoc q\&a meeting discussing GloBI design / implementation / vision

Participants:
Cala, Jorrit

Point to discuss
Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.08.005.

No significant changes to GloBi processes from what is described in 2014 paper

re: Poelen et al. 2014 2.1 ingestion framework - Cala asks what “ingestion” means here

Jorrit: I would rephrase “ingestion” to be more like “tracking” to emphasize that the original data remains in their original location and that GloBI tracks, indexes, aligns, reviews etc and relate the results back to the original .

https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/process

About data stored in GloBI: there is an archive but this is not the main purpose of GloBi, still, Jorrit explains that versioning is very important because datasets change- Elton Dataset Cache: https://zenodo.org/records/3950557. Not fully updated now but Jorrit considering a new format for GloBI reviews.

https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/data - one of the products of the GloBI data processing workflow is a graph database “neo4j graph db”. This ~8GB dataset is copied onto a server that runs a read-only database (that happens to be a neo4j graph database / compare with a mysql mariadb relational database). This allows for interactive queries that help power https://globalbioticinteractions.org web pages and rglobi.

https://hetzner.de is used to rent general server services “bare rent.” Jorrit pays ~Eur 90/year for this service (much more affordable than other cloud service), but uses it for more than GloBI.

But GloBI could run from any server - requirements are not huge, it is designed to be easy to run.

How does EuroAPPA relate to GloBI? https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/euroappa/

Jorrit: EuroAPPA offers a curated list of existing datasets that are also indexed by GloBI so that you can search and review them. Publish reviews regularly in several locations, one of them e.g. Zenodo. Anything new we find on pollination, we will index in GloBi (or try to), that is, in EuroAPPA.

Resources that GloBI can run on in BUTTERFLY partners- could be interesting to explore hosting GloBI at Sussex or Jagiellonian U (as well as in its usual location) - at least temporarily

Jorrit sees the GloBI website as a proof of concept - in the sense that all data services are temporary!

We discussed how EuroAPPA will need its own nice-looking website as an interface for users who expect that and also as output of the project (this is in addition to any publications).

4/03/2025 (seventh meeting) BUTTERFLY has now officially started) Yay!

Note: cc Butterfly’s Project Manager Nilgun ([email protected]) in all emails to Jeroen in his capacity of coordinator

Participants:
Cala, Claus, Nick, Jeff, Jorrit, Jeroen, Nilgun, Laura Drivdal

Points to discuss today

  • Work on DoPI begins
    • Cala and Nick - hiring undergrad students to start adding data to DoPI - need a lead time to hire because of University of Sussex new hiring process
    • Jorrit: keep a list of publications
      • Keep track of publications with well-structured data in appendices versus data embedded in the paper (sorting - low hanging fruit / )
      • Plan storage of PDFs - publish the list in EuroAPPA
      • similar project ~ https://batlit.org - Zotero library accessible to the project community only (updates are published in Zenodo) - a collaboration with https://plazi.org .. Similar project - https://taxodros.github.io .
    • Claus has ~15k bee literature references as well as their pdfs, uses Endnote to manage the corpus. Potential collaboration with DoPI existing / projected reference lists.
    • Cala: We will next make decisions about time allocation to new versus older data (or recycled - reused data vs original data), geographical regions and less-studied pollinators. We will report back on how much help time we really have (after seeing new contract rules)
    • Jeff thinks there are lots of new data, at least for non-bees, especially Diptera and moths. Also, for European plants he estimates that perhaps no more than 50% of species have pollinator data.

  • Jorrit suggests we start with reviews of the existing datasets - use first meetings for this.

  • Steps to build EuroAPPA

Post meeting - Jorrit created a first pass at table “Dataset Review” on the GloBI EuroAPPA page - https://globalbioticinteractions.org/euroappa#data-review . This table aims to facilitate data review of existing datasets of interest to EuroAPPA and record observations.

04-2-2025 (sixth meeting)

Agenda
Participants
Cala, Noa, Jeff, Claus, Nicolas, Jorrit, Nuria, Laura

Nuria of Iberian Web of Life joins the call to get introduced to BUTTERFLY/EuroAPPA and associated projects
Noa: asks if she has considered standardisation of terminology in the activities integrated in their project.
Nuria answered that one WP is about data harmonisation, so she would be happy to integrate.
Claus: Aarhus University - collecting data BUTTERFLY - collect
Cala: University of Sussex, UK - our role in BUTTERFLY is to summarize existing and new plant-pollinator data in several ways. This subproject is called EuroAPPA
Jeff: pollination ecologist - mutualistic interactions - working with Cala and Jorrit and others to put data into EuroAPPA and involved in data collection in the Caribbean (Martinique, Curacao)
Laura: University of Bergen (Norway) University Library
Nick - University of Sussex working on plant-pollinator postdoc - curating data coming in Database of Pollinator Interactions (DoPI)

Cala - New project led by Sarah Leonhardt - Soil Dependent Pollinators (ProPollSoil) - pollinator-relevant soil data to be integrated into EurAPPA
VALOR - Sister project of BUTTERFLY (Coordinator Tom Breeze) - Currently celebrating their Kick-Off. Sharing efforts on other data on pollinator networks. (website? grant project page?)
AGRI4Poll - (Coordinator Adam VANBERGEN)

Cala - talks about slides for the VALOR kick-off.
Jorrit suggests emphasising the difference between data (versioned digital objects) and search indexes (dynamic, not versioned, portals and services).
Noa - BUTTERFLY includes many different kinds of data beyond plant-pollinator, specifically into the sociological aspects - looking at the sociological dimension of pollinators (e.g., cultural heritage).
Claus - who is coordinating the sociological data collection and their relation to EuroAPPA.

07-1-2025 (fifth meeting)

Participants
Cala, Jeff, Jeroen, Ugo Mendes, Jorrit, Joe

Initial discussion of ancient database history: https://jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/01/07/was-this-the-first-online-database-of-plant-pollinator-interactions/
This highlights the importance of preserving data for the longer term!

Ugo is sharing that he’s planning to lead the bat field collection in Curacao / Martinique. Jeff is planning to join. Jorrit shares he had some bat connections through https://globalbioticinteractions.org/gbatnet and https://batbase.org . Perhaps something to collaborate ?

Joe reports about a short pre-Christmas meeting with Claus about field sampling protocols for upcoming field season. Draft protocol in preparation now, to be circulated among small group of PIs in charge of the 6 living labs plus overseas territories. The plan is to co-create protocol in collaboration with all LL PI´s and standardize as much as the different environments allow.

Cala suggests to design the data formats used to digitally capture the measurements and wonders how to best coordinate.

Jorrit asks - how are you planning to align your protocol with downstream data publication and indexing? Is there a way to do a “line check” to work towards smoother digital dissemination and reuse.

Jorrit suggests using existing datasets (e.g. Dopi) to generate data reviews and use this to plan for data sharing, rather than focusing too much on collecting all data in exactly the same formats (not realistic). (jorrit: a data review can include how data elements and methods align with agreed upon sampling protocols for our project)

Jeroen reported that The location of the Kick-off meeting will most likely (waiting for formal green light from UiB procurement) be the Norway house in Paris at the Cite Internationale Universitaire Paris in the 14th district.
https://www.ciup.fr/maisons/maison-de-norvege/
On google maps:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9EsqMmr6M1FmZxs38
(The UiB team is investigating whether CIUP also can offer accommodation at the CIUP campus)

Jeff & Joe discussed differences/similarities in the sampling protocols in the European v Caribbean (insects v vertebrates) field work.

Actions:

  • Joe to invite us (one of us?) to protocol planning meeting so we can contribute to data formats. This can be later on once a smaller team has planned the field work, or as convenient (Joe to decide when to invite us)

03-12-2024 (fourth meeting)

Participants
Cala, Jorrit, Claus, Jeff, Nick, Noa, Jeroen

agenda
1. data management status quo
2. (proposed by Jorrit) outcome of code review of DOPI

Question: Who is in charge of data management for Butterfly?

Jeroen: WP9.1 - Laura Drivdal (University of Bergen) is the Data Management lead. Data Management Plan (DPM) will be included in Deliverable 9.1 (M6), which will be updated mid-term (M24), and a final DMP will be published (M48).

Question: What is the relationship between EuroAPPA and the Data Management Plan (DMP) planning activities?

Noa - For the drafting and defining activities in the DMP, we need an internal (within BUTTERFLY partners) review of data needs, flows and production. Laura may want to ask the partners (via the WP Leaders or tasks) what data they’d need (use) and deliver (produce). The consultation would include the needs regarding embargo or data sharing within the WP or tasks.

Cala - let’s add Data Management to the agenda of kick-off meeting in April

Jorrit - Is the Butterfly “Description of Action” Part B planned to be openly accessible?
Jeroen - Currently, not, but this can be revisited as a consortium.
Noa- Suggest polling this decision to open access “Butterfly Description of Action Part B”, as has been done for PollinERA (https://riojournal.com/article/127485/ ) in the kickoff meeting agenda.
Jeroen hints at publishing parts of the “Butterfly Description of Action Part B” separately.
Jorrit - could be published in parts, promising to publish it all when everyone is ready.
Claus - LL meeting later in December about field protocols and standardised data collection (this can link back to the Data Management Plan (DMP)
Noa - Would it be an idea to create an internal data review board (Jorrit: what data would be under review? field data? Any data generated by the project) within BUTTERFLY to help keep track of FAIRness and data quality. The concept of FAIR will be agreed in practice within the group. (Jorrit: I think we need to define what we mean by “FAIR” - I’d prefer to be specific, e.g., show 2 examples of how your data was reused.)
Jeff - Need to have two time points before the peer review: prior to data collection and at the point of data collation.

Jorrit - He reviewed the DOPI source code and documentation (thanks for sharing).
Code is tightly connected to data, but the data reviewed is incomplete; both need to be analysed together (code + data). DOPI uses stack technologies (PHP + MariaDB + WordPress) - common technologies used by many so it is versatile in terms of the people that eventually would need to deal with the system. Software development practices are old-school - challenges for other developers to work with code (ideally, version control systems (e.g., GitHub or others) would be used, but this seems not to be the case?). Even the code would require some improvement in its FAIRness, documentation, version control, etc.
It should be easy to fix current problems with large databases by avoiding the current path of saving before processing.
Proposes review of data, code and tools.
Proposes to get a common vocabulary and standards for revisions

Jeroen - Tom Breeze (VALOR coordinator) wants to meet in January to discuss data sharing. It is possible for Tom and the WP leaders to meet the discussion group in relation to the data.

IDEAS FROM TODAY TO BE INCLUDED IN BUTTERFLY:

  • DMP that includes the view of all the partners
  • Create a Data peer-review board
  • Agree on a common vocabulary and standards for revisions
  • Peer-review data, but also code
  • If possible, add this as agenda point in kick off meeting

05-11-2024 (third meeting)

Participants
Cala, Jorrit, Jeff, Laura, Nick, Joe

agenda (tentative)
1. introductions
2. first steps for building the platform including the FAIR aspects that Noa mentioned after the last meeting
3. update on DoPI (Nick/Cala)
4. update on GloBI (Jorrit)
5. update on EU Pollinator Hub (Noa)

Cala - question - Do we have clear data management plans for data collection, for example Living Labs? How does this relate to FAIR?

Laura - In BUTTERFLY proposal: plan was to make the plan.

Joe - I am about to teach a course on Open Science/ FAIR data - Findable Accessible Interoperable Reuse - applicable standards - DwC-A - we are writing packages to facilitate R packages to make them “FAIR” . Make sure to “package” data in a way to make them FAIR.
https://github.com/LivingNorway/LivingNorwayR - Is the package I was referring to. We have a replacement package that is coming out very soon though that allows for packaging datasets using any controlled vocabulary and not just Darwin Core though. I’d be really happy to implement the plant-pollinator vocabulary.

Jeff- specific vocabulary for plant-pollinator interactions - good starting point for DoPI
Here it is: https://ppi.rebipp.org.br/
The WorldFAIR reports can be downloaded from here: https://worldfair-project.eu/agricultural-biodiversity/

Jorrit - in my view, the most important part of FAIR is the last letter ”R” - data review where data review is a first demonstration of data reuse, that should be done by someone who did not collect the data. I suggest data reviews from day 1

Noa - I think the best would be to have a two entries to the FAIR principles: 1. train and request the partners about FAIR principles and how to build up databases and 2. peer review the datasets going out the be published in to FAIR principles.
In the EU Pollinator Hub we create machine generated reviews as well as human reviews. Talking about EU Pollinator Hub integrating with B-Good Bee Health Monitoring.


example of report -

Cala- from DoPi’s perspective, it would be a good investment of time to get LL leaders to agree early on about data collection formats, for internal sharing and for integration into open access repositories. Noa is part of the Data Management team.

Jorrit: status of GloBI <> EU Pollinator Hubs - https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991

Jorrit - showed an example of a review of Jeff’s Apocynaceae paper: https://depot.globalbioticinteractions.org/reviews/globalbioticinteractions/pollinators-of-apocynaceae-database/
also one for DoPI: https://depot.globalbioticinteractions.org/reviews/globalbioticinteractions/dopi/

Nick- DoPI update: new small funding grant from Eva Crane bee charity will fund Nick (for new data analysis) and web developer to update import and export so DoPI can handle the large datasets expected from BUTTERFLY (and hopefully PropPollSoil).
Jorrit offers to take a look at DoPI’s code

Cala mentioned SafeGUARD and how their work is similar to DoPI https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/989

Joe - will propose WP1 in-person meeting right before or after kick-off meeting in April (Jorrit will not be attending in person due to anniversary and other engagement).

DoPI<>GloBI - https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/dopi/ with make.sh being the script that grabs data and turns it into interactions.tsv .

All agree to do recurring monthly meetings first Tuesdays of each month at same time (2pm UK).

28-08-2024 (second meeting)

Participants
Cala, Jorrit, Jeff, Noa, Jeroen, Claus, Joe

Notes

  • Jorrit - presentation of GloBI functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA
    • BallroomA_Tuesday_1700_Poelen(reused from 2017) as presented at Poelen, J., 2017. Global Biotic Interactions: A Catalyst for Integrating Existing Interaction Datasets, Connecting Data Curators and Developing Data Exchange Methods. Proceedings of TDWG, 1, p.e20214. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3897/tdwgproceedings.1.20214.
    • Review paper created by bots in GloBi
    • https://depot.globalbioticinteractions.org/reviews/Extended-Bee-Network/bee-interaction-database/
    • Q. from Joe: Is there any scope in GloBI’s current data model for placing estimates of the strength of the relationship? So that “eats” in this example could be qualified (sort of like “sometimes eats”, “rarely eats”).
    • A. from Jorrit: not easy, better to keep the original data linked to GloBI.
    • A. from Jeff: It’s challenging because the strength of interactions can vary a lot in space and time.
    • Q. from Noa: Is this a manual or automatic review? A. from Jorrit: Automated, but “nudged” by a human.
  • Cala - presentation of DoPI functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA
    • hired a bunch of students to process datasets of scientific quality data.
    • every single data point has been entered manually with to DoPI schema specifically designed for pollination interactions
    • every taxonomic name is linked to a name identifier, so that information can be looked up on a separate website
    • strength of interactions ~ quality of the datapoint (visit vs. flower visitation vs pollen seen on insect etc) expressed in various levels 1-5.
    • data in spreadsheets and databases
    • uses “simple” web technologies - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL with a web interface
    • workflow spreadsheets -> mysql -> web interface
    • possible for folks to submit their data for inclusion in DoPI
    • Balfour, N.J., Castellanos M.C., Goulson, D., Philippides, A. & Johnson, C. (2022) DoPI: The Database of Pollinator Interactions. Ecology, e3801. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3801
    • working with “computer engineer” to help improve DoPI
    • Jorrit Asks: where do you keep the original data - Cala Answer: Sussex hosts DoPI websites as well as the original spreadsheets.
    • Noa - how do you manage to make the DoPI data FAIR - what is your protocol for including data in DoPI? How do you assess the datasets for their FAIR-ness? - Cala Answer: Most datasets are published and openly available. We tried to include each datapoint published in a scientific dataset.
      • Noa - how to best reuse tables / datasets in publications - some additional metadata is sometimes needed to fully understand the data? - Cala: we categorized the “quality” of the pollination interaction (see above).
    • Claus - I often introduce errors or mistakes every time I move data.
    • Jorrit - We need to keep track of all the processing we do from data in datasets when we reuse them for other things.
  • Noa - presentation of EU Pollinator Hub functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA (10 minutes)
    • Presentation page: https://pollinatorhub.eu/
    • Data Platform: https://app.pollinatorhub.eu/
    • BeeXML Standard for data sharing: https://beexml.org/
    • Notes:
      • Pollinator Hub is an infrastructure that aims to bring datasets together - scope: integrating any data related to pollinators, pollination, bees and beekeepers.
      • data is coming from many different sources academics, industry, field experts, and community scientists with very different ways of expressing and collecting the data
      • create a dictionary to help standardize data integration and classify specific concerns. This dictionary also helps to translate the terms into different languages (CSV, JSON, XML). The dictionary is a community resource.
      • the Hub is an open-source community tool with collaboration features like working in close teams, discussions etc.
      • Whenever we see overlapping concepts, an associated descriptor is created in the Pollinator Hub dictionary. These descriptors help to link datasets and their records that use these concepts. Example: below for concept “Belgium”
      • Some datasets are open access, and the provider decides how to publish the dataset (open / closed, lisence, etc. ).
      • Pollinator Hub provides a tool for data profiling (e.g., describing the dataset and specifying the license, column descriptions, as specified by the data provider).
      • Pollinator Hub produces downloadable reviews/descriptors of the datasets.
      • Note by Jorrit - pollinator hub folks have been responsive in helping to link their data across other projects (like GloBI) - https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991 - with some follow-up items to help work towards a first link between GloBI <> EU Pollinator Hub. A similar initiative led to an initial integration with GloBI <> DoPI (see https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/780 ). Pollinator Hub API is on the way.
      • Addition on the quality assessment of the Pollinator Hub:

Commonalities of the three platforms (and teams behind them):
We all agree that we care about data sharing and data quality
We all aim to preserve the original data
And be able to review data - this implies comparing datasets and therefore having them in common categories

Jeroen:
Quality of the data has three angles:

  • Quality of the data itself
  • Assessment of the quality of the data
  • Attributes of the data and their quality

For next meeting:

  • List of the other components that will need to be in EuroAPPA beyond datasets (eg. code, model results, maps, any other results of the project and beyond) (20 minutes)

———————————

EuroAPPA Meeting 01-07-2024 (first meeting)

Notes

Participants
Cala, Jorrit, Jeff, Noa, Jeroen, Claus, Joe
Agenda

  • Discuss existing EU hubs on pollinators
  • Ideas on how we can approach the one-stop-shop pollinator information hub to suggest to VALOR

Action Items
(Noa) check on the availability of BeeLife overview of the EU pollinator project

(Jorrit, done) setup EuroAPPA GloBI project page
https://www.globalbioticinteractions.org/euroappa/ include Butterfly 24 partners. In addition, make a list of related initiatives shared in this meeting. A place where everything is linked.

(Cala) create poll using https://framadate.org/abc/en/ or similar for the internal BUTTERFLY/EuroAPPA meeting in late August, propose an agenda, etc. Tentative points for the late August meeting Agenda:

  • Jorrit - presentation of GloBI functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA
  • Cala (+Nick) - presentation of DOPI functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA
  • Noa - presentation of EU Pollinator functionalities and how to use it in BUTTERFLY + vision for EuroAPPA
  • Other visions of EuroAPPA?
  • List of the other components that will need to be in EuroAPPA beyond datasets (eg. code, model results, maps, any other results of the project and beyond)
  • Other points:
    • decide when/if to propose a meeting with VALOR pollinator hub team

(TBD) - organise a meeting to find a way to deal with data sharing among BUTTERFLY members and (potentially) with other non-POLLINATOR projects within the project(s) like VALOR etc - close to project start (December/January).

Notes

Cala - SafeHub derived from SafeGuard, involves folks from VALOR. Pensoft is developing the SafeHub infrastructure. Pensoft has received funding from various EU projects to develop. Cala is editor in chief for Journal of Pollination Ecology and was approached by Pensoft with a business proposal and rejected their offer.

Think this got shared in previous emails already but here is the Safeguard web page: https://www.safeguard.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/Project/SafeHub.aspx

Noa - BeeLife developed the EU Pollinator Hub for the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority). EFSA is the owner but has not committed to long-term maintenance. It aims to bring together all pollinator data that can be used for example pesticide risk assessment. ECHA (European Chemicals Agency) will use the same framework for chemical risk assessment. Used as a repository with data curation.
Pollinator Hub is in contact with SafeHub. Not linked to any specific project, but is used by many.

Simon Potts

Noa - suggested not developing anything new, but reusing existing.

Jorrit - suggests a sustainability model where we use EuroAPPA as an opportunity to provide links to all existing resources and certify that the resources (data, websites, etc) are standardized, movable, reusable and transferable (give them a “sticker” confirming this)

Jeff - let EuroAPPA focus on plant pollinator interactions. Looking at all of this, DOPI and GloBI stand out because they deal with INTERACTIONS, not just “pollinators”, and provide important resources for the pollinators, and the pollinators that service the plants.

Joe - three different components - (1) mobilizing existing data (2) collecting raw data (3) processing datasets into model output (data synthesis). Our very specific BUTTERFLY use-case-driven “one-stop shop” (EuroAPPA) should enable the distribution of the data and the model results. We need the functionality and can reuse existing initiatives when needed.

Noa - Questions:

  • Do we have any software developers in the team? Jorrit +
  • How will we share the data among the 24 partners during the project in a standardised way? (daily data-sharing work) - The EU Pollinator Hub allows this team to work on datasets.
  • about modelling - How will we present the outcome of the modelling efforts in a reusable way?

List of Various Initiatives
1. EU Pollinator Hub / EFSA owns it https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991
2. SafeGuard https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/989
3. EU Pollinator Information Hive
4. Simon Potts keeps a website links to various initiatives
6. BeeLife keeps track of everything pollinator-related in the EU (Noa to check available)
7. Leon Marshall’s project (“Beeconnected: decoding interactions in space and time through predictive ecology”) https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/viveni222141
8. B-Good - https://b-good-project.eu/
9. PoshBee - https://poshbee.eu/
10. EUPoMS - https://wikis.ec.europa.eu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=23462107
11. eBMS - https://butterfly-monitoring.net/
12. Nordic Pollinator Project - coordinated by KEMI
13. STEP
14. SUPER-B
15. B-THENET
16. BeSafeBeeHoney
17. iPOL-ERA
18. Better-B
19. ApiGuards -
20. WorldFAIR - https://worldfair-project.eu/agricultural-biodiversity/
21. PollinERA - https://pollinera-horizon.eu/ + WildPosh - https://wildposh.eu/
22. VALOR + BUTTERFLY
23. Pollinator Academy - https://pollinatoracademy.eu/
24. COLOSS
25. SURPASS - https://bee-surpass.org/
26. RestPoll - https://restpoll.eu/
….

from Simon Potts website

  • Safeguard: Safeguarding European wild pollinators
  • DRUID: Drivers and Repercussions of UK Insect Declines (NERC)
  • EU-PoMS: Design of the European Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU DG ENV)
  • EuropaBON: Europa Biodiversity Observation Network: integrating data streams to support policy (EU H2020)
  • PoshBee: Pan-European Assessment, Monitoring, and Mitigation of Stressors on the Health of Bees (EC H2020)
  • Showcase: Showcasing synergies between agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem services to help farmers capitalising on native biodiversity (EU H2020)
  • SMOOPS: Sustainable Management of Orchard Pollination Services (BBSRC/NERC, Syngenta, Avalon and Worldwide Fruit)
  • SPRING: Supporting Pollinator Recovery through Indicators and Monitoring (DG ENV)
  • ORBIT: Developing resources for European bee inventory and taxonomy (DG ENV)
  • BBSRC Waitrose Collaborative Training Partnership (Reading lead)
  • PMRP Pollinator Monitoring and Research Partnership (Defra, JNCC, the Welsh Government, Scottish Government and project partners)
  • Tropical: Translating Research Opportunities to enhance Pollination benefits to economically Important Crops And improve Livelihoods (GCRF)
  • SuperFarm: Sustainable farming through effective pollination and pest regulation in India (GCRF)
  • RestPoll: Restoring Pollinator habitats across European agricultural landscapes based on multi-actor participatory approaches (Horizon EU)
  • WildPosh: Pan European assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of chemical stressors on the health of wild pollinators (Horizon EU)
  • MAMBO: Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of Biodiversity (Horizon EU)
  • STING: Science and Technology for Pollinating Insect0073
  • Nature positive finance (NERC)

Recently completed Projects:

  • STEP: Status and Trends of European Pollinators (Coordinator, EU Framework 7)
  • LIBERATION - Linking farmland biodiversity to ecosystem services for effective ecological intensification (EU FP7)
  • SCALES: Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales (EU Framework 7)
  • SUPER-B - Sustainable Pollination in Europe (EU COST Action)
  • NPPMF - National Pollinator and Pollination Service Monitoring Framework (Defra)
  • Crop pollination: Sustainable Pollination services for UK Crops (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  • AgriLand: Linking agriculture and land use change to pollinator populations (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  • Urban Pollinators: Urban Pollinators: their ecology and conservation (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  • Landscape food webs: structure and function (NERC)
  • Closing the gap: bigger, healthier, and better-connected hedgerows (Green Recovery Challenge Fund)
  • Resilient Pollination: Modelling Landscapes for Resilient Pollination Services (BBSRC Global Food Security)
  • Optimising multifunctional land-use decisions: combining environmental, economic and social models for pollinators (NERC)
  • Economic benefits of pollination to global food systems: Evidence and knowledge gaps (NERC)

EU Projects on Pollinators

List of Various Initiatives

  1. Soil Dependent Pollinators (ProPollSoil) - New project led by Sarah Leonhardt - pollinator-relevant soil data to be integrated into EurAPPA
  2. VALOR - Sister project of BUTTERFLY (Coordinator Tom Breeze) - Currently celebrating their Kick-Off. Sharing efforts on other data on pollinator networks. (website? grant project page?)
  3. AGRI4Poll - (Coordinator Adam VANBERGEN)
  4. EU Pollinator Hub / EFSA owns it https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/991 and EU Pollinator Hub - https://pollinatorhub.eu and the APP https://app.pollinatorhub.eu
  5. SafeGuard https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/989 Safeguarding European wild pollinators
  6. EU Pollinator Information Hive
  7. Leon Marshall’s project (“Beeconnected: decoding interactions in space and time through predictive ecology”) https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/viveni222141
  8. B-Good - https://b-good-project.eu/ Pan-European Assessment, Monitoring, and Mitigation of Stressors on the Health of Bees (EC H2020)
  9. PoshBee - https://poshbee.eu/
  10. EUPoMS - https://wikis.ec.europa.eu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=23462107 Design of the European Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU DG ENV)
  11. eBMS - https://butterfly-monitoring.net/
  12. Nordic Pollinator Project - coordinated by KEMI
  13. STEP: Status and Trends of European Pollinators (Coordinator, EU Framework 7)
  14. B-THENET
  15. BeSafeBeeHoney
  16. iPOL-ERA
  17. Better-B
  18. ApiGuards -
  19. WorldFAIR - https://worldfair-project.eu/agricultural-biodiversity/
  20. PollinERA - https://pollinera-horizon.eu/
  21. WildPosh - https://wildposh.eu/ Pan-European assessment, monitoring, and mitigation of chemical stressors on the health of wild pollinators (Horizon EU)
  22. BUTTERFLY
  23. Pollinator Academy - https://pollinatoracademy.eu/
  24. COLOSS
  25. SURPASS - https://bee-surpass.org/
  26. RestPoll - https://restpoll.eu/
  27. DRUID: Drivers and Repercussions of UK Insect Declines (NERC)
  28. EuropaBON: Europa Biodiversity Observation Network: integrating data streams to support policy (EU H2020)
  29. Showcase: Showcasing synergies between agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystem services to help farmers capitalising on native biodiversity (EU H2020)
  30. SMOOPS: Sustainable Management of Orchard Pollination Services (BBSRC/NERC, Syngenta, Avalon and Worldwide Fruit)
  31. SPRING: Supporting Pollinator Recovery through Indicators and Monitoring (DG ENV)
  32. ORBIT: Developing resources for European bee inventory and taxonomy (DG ENV)
  33. BBSRC Waitrose Collaborative Training Partnership (Reading lead)
  34. PMRP Pollinator Monitoring and Research Partnership (Defra, JNCC, the Welsh Government, Scottish Government and project partners)
  35. Tropical: Translating Research Opportunities to Enhance Pollination Benefits to Economically Important Crops and Improve Livelihoods (GCRF)
  36. SuperFarm: Sustainable farming through effective pollination and pest regulation in India (GCRF)
  37. RestPoll: Restoring Pollinator habitats across European agricultural landscapes based on multi-actor participatory approaches (Horizon EU)
  38. MAMBO: Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of Biodiversity (Horizon EU)
  39. STING: Science and Technology for Pollinating Insect0073
  40. Nature positive finance (NERC)
  41. LIBERATION - Linking farmland biodiversity to ecosystem services for effective ecological intensification (EU FP7)
  42. SCALES: Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales (EU Framework 7)
  43. SUPER-B - Sustainable Pollination in Europe (EU COST Action)
  44. NPPMF - National Pollinator and Pollination Service Monitoring Framework (Defra)
  45. Crop pollination: Sustainable Pollination services for UK Crops (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  46. AgriLand: Linking agriculture and land use change to pollinator populations (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  47. Urban Pollinators: Urban Pollinators: their ecology and conservation (Insect Pollinator Initiative project, RCUK)
  48. Landscape food webs: structure and function (NERC)
  49. Closing the gap: bigger, healthier, and better-connected hedgerows (Green Recovery Challenge Fund)
  50. Resilient Pollination: Modelling Landscapes for Resilient Pollination Services (BBSRC Global Food Security)
  51. Optimising multifunctional land-use decisions: combining environmental, economic and social models for pollinators (NERC)
  52. Economic benefits of pollination to global food systems: Evidence and knowledge gaps (NERC)