Project objectives
Understanding molecular biodiversity is essential for ecological conservation and sustainable development. While a vast array of molecular data awaits exploration, its lack of connectivity with other sources of data and metadata such as geographical reference, habitat, population size and phenotypic data often pose significant barriers to biodiversity research.
This project proposal is about developing Odyssey, a web portal in the form of a user-friendly interface that will allow researchers, educators and citizens to navigate the world of molecular biodiversity using Greece and Norway as case studies – two countries with a characteristic and unique wealth of biodiversity, representative for Mediterranean and Nordic types of ecosystems respectively.
Based on existing sources of information and prototype applications available for specific regions and taxa, this project aims to link actual efforts and develop a new interface to offer diverse functionalities for data exploration and analysis, such as descriptive statistics, graphs, maps, customisable data filters and dynamic visualisations. Through modular design, the application will ensure flexibility and scalability, enabling easy integration of new data sets and analytical tools in the future. This approach will be used for training and communication, inviting traditional biodiversity research groups to utilise new information concerning the spatial patterns of biodiversity and their connection with features that are important for designing conservation measures, such as habitat connectivity, representativity, population demographics, dynamics of adaptation and migration.
Odyssey’s outcome will be a valuable tool for studying and, ultimately, offering a basis for managing and conserving the rich molecular biodiversity of Greece and Norway, as well as supporting the activities of the ELIXIR Biodiversity Community in the two Nodes and in Europe. This will promote collaboration, innovation and knowledge exchange in biodiversity research and beyond.
This new tool will be developed and offered under an open-source licence, encouraging community participation and contribution to further enhance its capabilities and broaden its applications, fostering a robust network for biodiversity research in Greece and Norway.
Project outcomes
Odyssey: An Interactive R Shiny App to Explore Molecular Biodiversity in Greece
Presented at the 23rd European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB2024) in Turku, Finland, Odyssey is an innovative R Shiny app designed to visualise and investigate molecular biodiversity across Greece. It provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface for exploring complex biological data through interactive visualisations.
Highlighted outcome (in progress)
Developed as an R package, The Odyssey app is being structured as a reusable R package to enable wider adoption and future scalability. Explore the code on GitHub. This outcome demonstrates the practical impact of ELIXIR’s support for open-source tools in biodiversity informatics.
Co-leads
- Aristotelis C. Papageorgiou, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
- Helle Tessand Baalsrud, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
