Venezuelan scientists team up to save irreplaceable data on biodiversity

By: Carlyn Scott, Science Communications Assistant

In times of political unrest, science often suffers. 

This is the case in Venezuela. The country has faced a series of political and socioeconomic crises that sparked an exodus of citizens, including many scientists, who fled the country for opportunities elsewhere. The “brain drain” was so severe that scientific publishing in Venezuela declined by 24% between 2015-2019. 

Ana Carolina Peralta Brichtova, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Frank Muller-Karger at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science (USF CMS), is one of the scientists who emigrated. Although Peralta Brichtova left Venezuela, she is still connected to her home country and committed to advancing science there. She and her colleagues recently published a collection of marine biodiversity data from Venezuela to help compile and preserve critical information. The collection appears in the Biodiversity Data Journal. 

Although open-source data is common and is often required based on public funding sources in the U.S., it is rarer in other countries such as Venezuela, Peralta Brichtova explained.

“I think the greatest benefit from this publication was that marine scientists in Venezuela now see the advantage of sharing data with a larger network,” said Peralta Brichtova. 

Peralta Brichtova earned her PhD at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, where she stayed on as a professor for 10 years teaching marine biology. While she loved teaching at her alma mater, the situation in Venezuela worsened and the government cut funding to academic institutions. This prompted Peralta Brichtova to seek a fellowship from the international Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) and the Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR). POGO is a forum established by international institutions to promote and advance the observation of the global ocean. She was offered this fellowship and was invited to CMS in 2021. There she trained in ocean color and satellite imagery to evaluate oceanic ecosystems under the guidance of Enrique Montes and Muller-Karger, a Distinguished University Professor at USF. 

Peralta Brichtova returned to Venezuela but continued a collaboration focused on using satellite cameras to map seagrass beds along the coast of Venezuela, around the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2022, she was invited back to USF as a postdoctoral Research Associate to expand that work and study nitrogen pollution in coastal Florida and U.S. Virgin Islands.

She is also continuing her role as a data manager and steward for the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS). OBIS is a global open-access data hub on marine biodiversity for science, conservation, and sustainable development that is sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Peralta Brichtova is strengthening the OBIS collaboration between the U.S. and Venezuela as well as other institutions by teaching them how to manage biological data on the platform. She is committed to helping other organizations learn about how to manage biological data, so they can share their data openly with their local and international colleagues.

Peralta Brichtova has settled into her new position in the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) lab of Muller-Karger: “I love the team I work with, the students, my colleagues, and all of the collaboration that happens here,” she said. 

“Ana Carolina is a very sharp and dedicated scientist who maintains contacts in Venezuela at the Universidad Simón Bolívar and throughout the Caribbean region,” said Muller-Karger. 

In her new position, Peralta Brichtova works with old and new colleagues to safeguard data in the OBIS database as well as other databases such as NASA’s SeaBASS used to calibrate satellites that measure the color of the ocean. Her work is helping establish a solid foundation for research on impacts of climate change and human activities on coastal and marine biodiversity, Muller-Karger said. 

While Peralta Brichtova is proud of the published work, she knows there is more to be done to preserve precious data.

“This paper is not the end,” she said. “Increasing funding will directly represent more data available for researchers on this platform. We need to secure funding to expand the database and preserve valuable marine biodiversity data.” 

Ana Carolina’s work immediately expands the network connections of researchers in countries and communities that have otherwise long been under-represented in the international science community, said Muller-Karger.