Ecological informatics: current scope and feature areas

Ecological informatics (ecoinformatics) is an interdisciplinary framework for the management, analysis and synthesis of ecological data by advanced computational technology [1]. Management of ecological data aims at facilitating data standardization, retrieval and sharing by means of metadata and object-oriented programming [2–6]. Analysis and synthesis of ecological data aim at elucidating principles of information processing, structuring and functioning of ecosystems, and forecasting of ecosystem behaviours by means of bio-inspired computation and hybrid models [1, 7–10]. Ecological informatics currently undergoes the process of consolidation as a discipline. It corresponds to and partially overlaps with the well-established disciplines of bioinformatics and ecological modelling, but is taking its distinct shape and scope. In Fig. 1, a comparison is made between ecological informatics and bioinformatics. Even though both are based on the same computational technology, their focus is different. Bioinformatics focuses very much on determining gene function and interaction [11, 12], protein structure and function [13, 14] as well as phenotypes of organisms utilizing DNA microarray, genomic, physiological and metabolic data [15] (Fig. 1a). In contrast, ecological informatics focuses on determining genotypes of populations by utilizing genomic, phenotypic and environmental data [16–18] as well as structure and functioning of ecosystems by utilizing community, environmental and climate data [19–23] (Fig. 1b). A comparison is made between ecological modelling and ecological informatics in Fig. 2. Even though both rely on similar ecological data, they adopt different approaches in utilizing the data. Whilst ecological modelling processes ecological data top down by ad hoc designed statistical or mathematical modelling methods [24, 25], ecological informatics infers multivariate equations and rule sets from ecological data patterns bottom up by computational techniques. The cross-sectional area between ecological modelling and ecological informatics refl ects a new generation of hybrid models that enable to predict emergent ecosystem structures and behaviours, and ecosystem evolution [9, 26–30]. Typically hybrid models embody biologically-inspired computation in deterministic ecological models [32].