I do not believe in spending years gathering data, then locking it up so no one else can use it. Here’s an overview of what kind of research data I’ve gathered and where to get it. Mainly it is Ugandan insect data.
There are also quite a few scripts, most of which won’t be of any use to other people. But users of the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility may want to glance at some of the tools.
FinBif (laji.fi)
Whenever I pin an insect, it gets a QR code and its own website. You can see all the information on when and where it was collected etc! Take a look at http://mus.utu.fi/ZMUT.4920 for an example.
Most of these are Ugandan pinned insects. Each Ugandan Malaise sample (about 2 dl of insects each) also has a code.
There are also other specimens, such as the insects I collected at Valsörarna in 2021.
All the specimens I’ve collected (and which have been databased) get updated to Bionomia. You can download an overview of these in table format from Zenodo.
Note that most of my insects don’t show up, because they are not yet databased. FinBif shows the tiny minority that I have finished processing.
If you want the data, you can:
- Download it from laji.fi, or
- Check what you want from laji.fi (or from Bionomia / Zenodo), then ask me to send it.
I recommend the latter, because I am able to download the data as a ready-to-use Excel or csv file. The laji.fi downloads are not user-friendly yet.
Zenodo
Whenever I publish an article, I upload the data to Zenodo. I also upload any scripts used to analyse the data, draw the figures etc.
Most of the uploads are on the Ugandan wasps. Download these data and scripts and you can repeat any of my articles.
I particularly recommend the background data on our long-term Malaise trapping in Uganda and Peru. What samples did we collect and when? What was the weather like? How many dead trees were there near our traps? Download the datasets and find out! You can even follow my Ugandan GPS tracks or read my research diary.
Some of my older data is in figshare instead of Zenodo.
Other data
My MSc thesis data is not (yet) in a permanent repository. You can download the data here. The raw data also includes my field notes. You may find it harder to read than you’d like.. I’ve learned quite a bit about data management (and good handwriting) since then.
Then there’s my Valsörarna data. Four prototype insect cameras, which took video of passing-by insects 24/7 the whole summer of 2021. Great data which could be perfect for figuring out what time of the year or day insects fly! Problem is, I haven’t found anywhere online which welcomes over 2TB of videos of insects..
Here’s a sample. Contact me if you want to use these, we’ll figure something out! I’ll be publishing an article on this soon, but that will focus on the method instead of the data.
GitHub
The scripts I’ve used to analyse the data for an article go in Zenodo. But there are lots of other tasks I prefer to ask my computer to do, instead of doing them myself.
GitHub has a selection of scripts for handling FinBif data, automatically creating an identification key etc. Not all of them are usable, mind you..
The one truly usable script will analyse the data of our long-term Malaise trapping in Uganda and Peru. Take the wasp data of a subfamily, and the computer will clean it up, draw figures showing when and where the wasps flew.. basically do everything that’s needed to publish a paper like https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190913. I’ll link to it when I’ve got a version that is user-friendly enough to upload.
The scripts are in R or Python. Skilled programmers be warned: I am mostly self-taught. This shows in my early scripts!