A specialist’s audit of aggregated occurrence records

Occurrence records for named, native Australian millipedes from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) were compared with the same records from the Millipedes of Australia (MoA) website, compiled independently by the author. The comparison revealed some previously unnoticed errors in MoA, and a much larger number of errors and other problems in the aggregated datasets. Errors have been corrected in MoA and in some data providers’ databases, but will remain in GBIF and ALA until data providers have supplied updates to these aggregators. An audit by a specialist volunteer, as reported here, is not a common occurrence. It is suggested that aggregators should do more, or more effective, data checking and should query data providers when possible errors are detected, rather than simply disclaim responsibility for aggregated content.