WiPFIM: A digital platform for interlinking biocollections of wild plants, fruits, associated insects, and their molecular barcodes

Abstract

The current knowledge on insects feeding on fruits is limited, and some of the scarce existing data on the fruit-associated insects are secluded within the host institutions. Consequently, their value is not fully realized. Moreover, in countries like Kenya, the integration of biocollections data within a digital framework has not been fully exploited. To address these gaps, this article presents a description of the development of a web-based platform for data sharing and integrating biodiversity historical data of wild plants, fruits, associated insects, and their molecular barcodes (WiPFIM) while leveraging data science technologies. The barcodes corresponding to the biocollections data were retrieved from BOLD database. The platform is an online resource about fruit-insect interactions that can be of interest to a worldwide community of users and can be useful in building innovative tools. The platform is accessible online at https://test-dmmg.icipe.org/wpfhi.

Keywords: biocollections; biodiversity; data integration; digitization; ecology; natural history collections; plants‐insect interaction.

FIGURE 1

System Architecture: At the highest level of the architecture, Kubernetes is used to manage the system, denoted by the outer blueish line. Below Kubernetes, the app service built on Next.Js and the database service (data source) built on PostgreSQL are housed within Docker containers shown in continuous black border lines. The components within each service, are depicted as dotted lines. The API fetches data from the database to be displayed in the User interface. The GIS layer is used to display sampling regions on a map. MAFFT, IQTREE, and Phylotree.js have been integrated for phylogenetic tree construction and visualization.

FIGURE 2

Plants and fruits with insects web page describing Vepris simplex. The plant has both orange and red fruits when ripe. Fruits of this plant were sampled in January, April, May, and December. The fruits of this plant have a wide range of associated insects, mostly Ceratitis species. One case of a Lepidoptera species was also found to feed on Vepris simplex. Three species of Braconidae, which are parasitoids of other insects, were reared from V. simplex fruits. These had probably attacked the moth species.

FIGURE 3

Insect web page describing the genus Ceratitis. The list of species under the genus is shown. The species are arranged alphabetically. In this figure, the first species shown is Ceratitis argentobrunnea. The information includes associated plants, image(s) sex, and sampling regions of the fruit that yielded C. argentobrunnea.

FIGURE 4

Phylogeny page for Phyllanthaceae plant family. The label of the terminal taxa consists of the species name, followed by the species ID as retrieved from the local database. The next part is NCBI accession and the last part is BOLD. The null at the last part of the name shows the absence of the NCBI accession number for the respective species from the BOLD database. Some species like Margaritaria discoidea species showed no genetic variation for the represented species. On the other hand, Flueggea virosa shows genetic divergence within the species. The scale represents substitutions per site per site. Left‐clicking each terminal taxa brings more options for users.