Reference BioImaging to assess the phenotypic trait diversity of bryophytes within the family Scapaniaceae

Abstract

Macro- and microscopic images of organisms are pivotal in biodiversity research. Despite that bioimages have manifold applications such as for assessing the diversity of form and function, FAIR bioimaging data in the context of biodiversity are still very scarce, especially for difficult taxonomic groups such as bryophytes. Here, we present a high-quality reference dataset containing macroscopic and bright-field microscopic images documenting various phenotypic attributes of the species belonging to the family of Scapaniaceae occurring in Europe. To encourage data reuse in biodiversity and adjacent research areas, we annotated the imaging data with machine-actionable meta-data using community-accepted semantics. Furthermore, raw imaging data are retained and any contextual image processing like multi-focus image fusion and stitching were documented to foster good scientific practices through source tracking and provenance. The information contained in the raw images are also of particular interest for machine learning and image segmentation used in bioinformatics and computational ecology. We expect that this richly annotated reference dataset will encourage future studies to follow our principles.