Data sharing and interoperability from multi-source long term observations: challenges and opportunities in marine biology

Long-term observatories are widely used in marine sciences to monitor marine ecosystems and investigate their evolution. Recently, data from innovative technologies as well as ‘omics-based' approaches is being collected alongside physical, biogeochemical and taxonomic information. Their integration represents a challenging opportunity, pushing for suitable computational approaches to for data retrieval, storage, interoperability, reusability and sharing. Several initiatives are addressing these issues, suggesting the most appropriate and sensitive strategies and protocols. Ensuring interoperability among different sources and providing seamless data access is essential when designing tools to store and share the collected information.Here we present our effort in the development of web-accessible resources for Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER), taking into account available protocols and approaching appropriate software solutions for: i) collecting and integrating real-time environmental and biological observations with -omics data; ii) exploiting international established data formats and protocols to expose through RESTful APIs the collected data; iii) accessing the collections through an interactive, web-accessible resource to permit aggregated views.The aim of this effort is to reinforce the leadership of the Stazione Zoologica “Anton Dohrn” as a Mediterranean Sea marine observatory, and to be ready for the next era challenges in marine biology.