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

Abstract

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