The need therefore arises to bridge this gap between specimen data and ecological information. In our case-study one way to do this was to view visits to K-7174 by arthropods from an event-centric perspective (Worboys, 2005). This affords a view of both behavior and ecological interactions (i.e. occurrents) from a level higher than that of the observer who sees the data as attributes of plant organisms and insect organisms (or continuants) which become preserved as specimens in natural history collections. Encoded on the specimen labels and in the database records documenting those labels are pieces of a puzzle that do not form a picture of a museum drawer containing pinned bees. Rather, the elements of the picture are the interactions between bees and plants, and the picture communicates the composition of the interactions and their relationships between themselves and with other things (e.g. predators) and events (e.g. heat waves). This view is more commensurable with the intention of an ecologist to acquire knowledge of the ecological relationships between arthropods and plants on a more general level, while looking down to the origin of much biodiversity information in specimen collections in natural history museums. In this paper we therefore hope to offer a more knowledge-centric solution that will give expression to the implicit knowledge of specialist ecologists who would otherwise be forced to use tools that reinforce a data-centric perspective.
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