Many points can be related ; macro-ecology is too changing from a case to another. Regular workflow do not exist, as in omics data analysis. Furthermore after data pre-processing steps, you need to draw quick models to optimize your workflow, so it can't be automatized easily.
In the scope of the “65 Millions observers” a French national project, we are directly confronted to these issues. We have to implement a national collaborative web platform dedicated to macro-ecological data access and analysis. We aim to facilitate and enhance participation to citizen science projects.
We assume that Galaxy is adapted to our problem. Recent evolution of Galaxy allowing us to dream, especially “interactive environment” functionality. Moreover, macro-ecologists are not really working directly on databases but from database extraction files (csv, tabular flat files), and some bioinformaticians seem to be ready to work as ecoinformaticians. This paves the way to the emergence of a Galaxy-E universe, with dedicated tools and communities.