USD Student Jacob Ridgway Created Time-Saving Database for Scientists
Most solutions to creating this data involve standardizing and storing current and future data, but Ridgway’s approach attempted to recapture massive amounts of past data.
“My project – the TroPhish project – was started in 2019 as a solution to the ecological data crisis and to provide scientists with a comprehensive quantification of global freshwater dietary data,” Ridgway said.
Ridgway and his group digitized approximately 140 years of data from fish predation literature. A total of 1,122 papers were extracted, scanned and reorganized into a universally usable format to create a database representing 532 different species across 118 freshwater fish families from every freshwater fish-habitable continent.
“I am proud of the countless hours I have put in and the many barriers I have overcome to complete this project,” Ridgway said. “I look forward to publicizing my work to be used by an international community of scientists to further the conservation of Earth’s freshwater resources.”
The group hopes its paper will be published, opening the door to garner more data and collaboration and providing scientists with an open-access database on global freshwater trophic interactions.
In his future, Ridgway plans to pursue a Ph.D. in aquatic ecology or a related discipline and focus on conserving and studying freshwater ecosystems.
