Dr Kiel Hards1, Miss Poppy Schlaadt1, Mr Nick Snellgrove1, Dr Uli Muellner1, Dr Petra Muellner1
1Epi, Miramar, New Zealand
Biography:
As Epi’s Data Science Lead Kiel drives the group’s work with clients in biodiversity, biosecurity, and the public sector to design and deploy robust solutions that turn laboratory and field data into insight. Kiel comes equipped with a strong foundation in microbiology and extensive experience working with complex biological data, having led large research programmes and built data science infrastructure in constrained and high assurance environments. Kiel specialises in production grade cloud-native pipelines to automate workflows, integrate biological datasets, and deliver real time dashboards and decision support tools that naturally integrate scientific methods, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Abstract:
Environmental DNA (eDNA) programs are generating increasingly large and complex datasets across species, sites, time periods, and environmental variables, creating a downstream challenge for bioinformatics, analysis and visualisation. How can researchers turn analytical outputs into maps that are fast, reproducible, interactive, and useful for interpretation and decision-making? To overcome these frustrations, we developed toro, a free R package that provides R bindings to the high-performance mapping library MapLibre GL JS, combining the accessibility and reproducibility of R with the speed and interactivity of modern browser-based rendering. Designed for use with the Quarto reporting framework and Shiny dashboards, toro supports the development of interactive maps and dashboards that can combine occurrence data, time-series observations, environmental layers, and geospatial products derived from eDNA workflows. This makes it easier to compare datasets, explore temporal and spatial patterns, communicate uncertainty and context, and share results with researchers, managers, regulators, and communities. By using modern browser-based rendering, toro provides a practical open-source pathway for visualising eDNA outputs that are difficult or impractical to display using conventional mapping tools, or out-of-the box software.