The course will explore the use large scale biodiversity databases for macroecological research. There is now a new emerging e-infrastructure for biodiversity which is making it possible and practical to merge data from large number of distributed sources. Instrumental to such progress is the ability to harmonise content in the integrated database, where use of scientific nomenclature is one of the hardest aspects to deal with. This is being solved by linking scientific names of organisms to their underlying taxonomic concepts, and automatic processing of their globally unique identifiers. This is the topic of an existing joint NordForsk project of the Nordic nodes of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
During the course the students will explore the utility of the new e-infrastructure and integrate the available Nordic databases of butterflies and moths. That unique integrated resource will be used to study the impact of climate change to the butterfly and moth fauna. The teachers include several world-leading researchers in macroecology whose advise and review of the results will help to build Nordic strength in this important topic.