News
An unconventional workshop in these unprecedented times
data marine biodiversity interoperability
A recent workshop brought together international participants to mobilize existing biodiversity data, advance interoperability, and build community. The workshop curriculum is modeled after The Carpentries and available for anyone to reuse.
Elizabeth Lawrence joined the OBIS secretariat
OBIS training officer secretariat
We are glad to announce that Dr Elizabeth Lawrence has joined our OBIS secretariat on 16 March 2022. In the coming year she will develop training resources to support researchers and data managers to manage and publish data from biological observing systems into OBIS following internationally agreed standards and best practices.
Vacancy - OBIS Capacity Development Officer (one year)
Vacancy Consultant Training
We are offering a one-year consultancy contract to support OBIS in the development of training material. The deadline for applications is 31 December 2021.
Serita Van Der Wal joined the OBIS secretariat
GOOS Biology data manager secretariat
We welcome Ms Serita Van Der Wal (South Africa) at the OBIS secretariat based at the IOC Project Office for IODE in Oostende (Belgium). She will support us in (i) managing the information about observing systems, networks, and data assets provided via a portal for the Global Ocean Observing System, Biology and Ecosystems Panel (GOOS BioEco) and (ii) provide coordination with the observing systems, networks, and data-producing projects contributing to biological and ecosystem Essential Ocean Variables (EOV) with the aim to bring more of the data from these facilities fully online through OBIS, and become interoperable and reusable as part of an integrated global ocean observing system.
Help us identify your needs for marine biodiversity data
Survey
To evaluate how growing needs for data and information can be met, OBIS is organizing an online survey. The survey closes at 14 November 2021. It will only take 5 minutes of your time. Thanks in advance!
OBIS partners with marine World Heritage sites in a global project to study biodiversity.
UNESCO World Heritage center eDNA
UNESCO launches an ambitious global citizen science project to assess the diversity of fish and endangered species at marine World Heritage sites. Environmental DNA analyses across a selection of these sites will also provide information to enable global analyses on the vulnerability of flagship marine protected areas to climate change. The project called: "eDNA expeditions in marine World Heritage Sites" is also endorsed as a project of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Recently published datasets
Use cases
Cold-water species deepen to escape warm water temperatures
Mediterranean Sea Ocean warming fish
How species traits of cephalopods and malacostracans, extracted from the OBIS database contributed to evidence of cold-water species deepening in response to warming waters in the Mediterranean Sea.
How anthozoan distribution records from OBIS contribute to the global biogeography of the ocean midnight zone
biogeography deepsea cnidaria
A global analysis of the benthic fauna of the lower bathyal using data from OBIS revealed a surprisingly high level of endemism. The study published in March 2022 by Watling & Lapointe (2022) proposed a revision of the bathyal provinces of the world.
Occupancy‐derived thermal affinities reflect known physiological thermal limits of marine species
climate physiology biogeography
In this study we used the robis package to extract 2,176,906 OBIS occurrence records for 533 marine species from 24 taxonomic classes for which we had access to experimentally derived thermal limits. By linking these occurrence records to global sea surface and sea bottom temperature, we compared the temperatures at which species actually live to their thermal limits.
(free e-book) Biogeographic Atlas of the Deep NW Pacific Fauna
NW Pacific deep-sea benthos
The Biogeographic Atlas of the Deep NW Pacific Fauna’ has been published by Pensoft as an open-access e-book, after a three-year intense collaboration of more than 40 deep-sea experts around the word. This book is designed as a guide, synthesis, and review of the current knowledge of the benthic fauna that is distributed in the bathyal and abyssal zones (below 2,000 m) of the NW Pacific. All the data (old and new) used are available in OBIS.
Some fish go deeper to cool off in warming seas
community temperature index climate change
A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change using OBIS data showed how fish, demersal and planktonic communities changed as warm-water species increase and cold-water marine species become less successful due to climate warming.
The great dying at the end of the Permian linked to ocean warming and oxygen loss
Biogeography extinction climate change
A study published in Science using historical data of ocean warming and oxygen loss, combined with species traits and occurrence data from OBIS revealed patterns of habitat loss and extinction at the end of the Permian period.







