How to cite: Page, R. (2023). The problem with GBIF’s Phylogeny Explorer. https://doi.org/10.59350/v0bt3-zp114 GBIF recently released the Phylogeny Explorer, using legumes as an example dataset. The goal is to enables users to “view occurrence data from the GBIF network aligned to legume phylogeny.” The screenshot below shows the legume phylogeny side-by-side with GBIF data.
How to cite: Page, R. (2023). Sub-second searching of millions of DNA barcodes using a vector database. https://doi.org/10.59350/qkn8x-mgz20 Recently I’ve been messing about with DNA barcodes.
How to cite: Page, R. (2023). What, if anything, is the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub?
How to cite: Page, R. (2023). Adventures in machine learning: iNaturalist, DNA barcodes, and Lepidoptera. https://doi.org/10.59350/5q854-j4s23 Recently I’ve been working with a masters student, Maja Nagler, on a project using machine learning to identify images of Lepidoptera. This has been something of an adventure as I am new to machine learning, and have only minimal experience with the Python programming language.
How to cite: Page, R. (2023). A taxonomic search engine. https://doi.org/10.59350/r3g44-d5s15 Tony Rees commented on my recent post Ten years and a million links. I’ve responded to some of his comments, but I think the bigger question deserves more space, hence this blog post. Tony’s comment {#tony’s-comment} My response I think there are several ways to approach this.
As trailed on a Twitter thread last week I’ve been working on a manuscript describing the efforts to map taxonomic names to their original descriptions in the taxonomic literature. The preprint is on bioRxiv doi:10.1101/2023.05.29.542697 Much of the work has been linking taxa to names, which still has huge gaps.
Some quick notes on interface ideas for digital libraries and/or knowledge graphs. Recently there’s been something of an explosion in bibliographic tools to explore the literature.
One thing about ChatGPT is it has opened my eyes to some concepts I was dimly aware of but am only now beginning to fully appreciate. ChatGPT enables you ask it questions, but the answers depend on what ChatGPT “knows”. As several people have noted, what would be even better is to be able to run ChatGPT on your own content. Indeed, ChatGPT itself now supports this using plugins.
I haven’t blogged for a while, work and other reasons have meant I’ve not had much time to think, and mostly I blog to help me think. ChatGPT is obviously a big thing at the moment, and once we get past the moral panic (“students can pass exams using AI!”) there are a lot of interesting possibilities to explore.
My dad died last weekend. Below is a notice in today's New Zealand Herald. I'm in New Zealand for his funeral. Don't really have the words for this right now.