Growth and Evolution of the Symbiota Portal Network

Abstract

Symbiota is empowering biodiversity collections communities across the globe to efficiently manage and mobilize their data. Beginning with only a handful of collections in two major portals in the early 2010s (Gries et al. 2014), Symbiota now acts as the primary content management system for over 1,000 collections in more than 50 portals. Over 1,800 collections share data through Symbiota portals, constituting over 90+ million records and 42+ million images. The iDigBio Symbiota Support Hub, a team and cyberinfrastructure based out of Arizona State University and supported by the United States (U.S.) National Science Foundation, hosts 52 Symbiota portals and provides daily help and resources to all Symbiota user communities. The Symbiota codebase is being actively developed in collaboration with several funded projects, including the U.S. National Ecological and Observatory Network (NEON), to support new data types and connections, such as between Symbiota portals and other collections management systems, and to other resources (e.g., Index Fungorum, Global Registry of Scientific Collections, Bionomia, Environmental Data Initiative). Because the Symbiota codebase is open source and shared among portals, new developments in any portal empower the entire network. Here we describe recent expansions of the Symbiota network, including new portals, collaborations, functionalities, and sustainability actions. We look forward to building further collaborations with diverse, international collections data communities.