Natural history museums commonly store and host research specimens and digital data collections that are incredibly important to advancing our understanding of biodiversity. While many data resources focus on preserving specimen information, some resources record species interactions (e.g., a parasite species infects a specific host species). One of the largest host-parasite databases in existence focuses solely on helminth parasites (parasitic worms). While a great resource, it lacks true location data, stopped receiving new interactions in 2003, and some taxonomic data on host and parasite species is incorrect. The researchers will work to clean, curate, augment, and georeference these data for the benefit of researchers wishing to understand parasite specificity, public health researchers thinking about potential spillover of helminths into humans or livestock, and biogeographers wishing to understand the distribution of biodiversity. This research will support the training of over 10 undergraduates in georeferencing and data curation, and support independent research projects and presentations at national conferences. The data will be curated in the open, allowing free and open access. Finally, we will use these data to engage people in codeFests, aimed at teaching computer programming concepts using this helminth data resource.

For more information on becoming involved with this effort, visit https://taddallas.github.io or send an email to tdallas@mailbox.sc.edu. And keep an eye out for advertising for the codeFests!