Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

FENNEC - Functional Exploration of Natural Networks and Ecological Communities

View ORCID ProfileMarkus J. Ankenbrand, Sonja Hohlfeld, View ORCID ProfileFrank Förster, View ORCID ProfileAlexander Keller
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/194308
Markus J. Ankenbrand
1Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Markus J. Ankenbrand
Sonja Hohlfeld
2Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Frank Förster
2Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
3Department of Bioinformatics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
4Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, Applied Ecology and Bioresources, Gießen, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Frank Förster
Alexander Keller
1Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
2Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
3Department of Bioinformatics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Alexander Keller
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Background Assessment of species composition in ecological communities and networks is an important aspect of biodiversity research. Yet, for many ecological questions the ecological properties (traits) of organisms in a community are more informative than their scientific names. Furthermore, other properties like threat status, invasiveness, or human usage are relevant for many studies, but they can not be directly evaluated from taxonomic names alone. Despite the fact that various public databases collect such trait information, it is still a tedious manual task to enrich existing community tables with those traits, especially for large data sets. For example, nowadays, meta-barcoding or automatic image processing approaches are designed for high-throughput analyses, yielding thousands of taxa for hundreds of samples in very short time frames.

Results Here we present the Fennec, a web-based workbench that eases this process by mapping publicly available trait data to the user’s community tables in an automated process. We applied our novel approach to a case study in pollination ecology to demonstrate the usefulness of the Fennec. The range of topics covered by the case study includes specialization, invasiveness, vulnerability, and agricultural relevance.

Significance The Fennec is a free web-based tool that simplifies the inclusion of known species traits in ecological community analyses. We encourage scientists to participate in trait data submission to existing trait databases and to use the Fennec for their analysis. A public instance containing various traits related to pollination ecology is available at http://fennec.molecular.eco.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted September 27, 2017.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
FENNEC - Functional Exploration of Natural Networks and Ecological Communities
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
FENNEC - Functional Exploration of Natural Networks and Ecological Communities
Markus J. Ankenbrand, Sonja Hohlfeld, Frank Förster, Alexander Keller
bioRxiv 194308; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/194308
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
FENNEC - Functional Exploration of Natural Networks and Ecological Communities
Markus J. Ankenbrand, Sonja Hohlfeld, Frank Förster, Alexander Keller
bioRxiv 194308; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/194308

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Ecology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4091)
  • Biochemistry (8772)
  • Bioengineering (6487)
  • Bioinformatics (23356)
  • Biophysics (11756)
  • Cancer Biology (9154)
  • Cell Biology (13257)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7418)
  • Ecology (11376)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15095)
  • Genetics (10403)
  • Genomics (14014)
  • Immunology (9126)
  • Microbiology (22070)
  • Molecular Biology (8783)
  • Neuroscience (47395)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1421)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2482)
  • Physiology (3705)
  • Plant Biology (8054)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1433)
  • Synthetic Biology (2211)
  • Systems Biology (6017)
  • Zoology (1250)