Hue University Rotifer Taxonomy workshop 6-12 March 2010 Global internet resources for taxonomists...

Hue University Rotifer Taxonomy workshop 6-12 March 2010

Global internet resources for taxonomists

Hendrik SEGERS

Belgian Biodiversity PlatformRoyal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences


Acronyms unlimited


Internet Resources for Taxonomists

Professional organisationLiteratureBiodiversity Information:• What: Taxonomy / Nomenclature information• Where: Biogeographical information /

Georef’d data (minimal)


Bionet International

• The world’s leading professional organisation for taxonomists

• Promotes taxonomy• Contains information for taxonomists

http://www.bionet-intl.org/


Literature

• The Biodiversity Heritage Library(26,500+ volumes, 10,800,000+ pages)

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/• The Gutenberg project:

http://www.gutenberg.org• Google books • Google Scholar


Literature

Free content:• CBD, FAO, RAMSAR, CMS… technical papers: • http://www.cbd.int/information/library.shtml • http://www.fao.org/corp/publications/en/• http://www.ramsar.org/index_key_docs.htm• http://www.cms.int/publications/index.htm

• CABI, IUCN, WWF manuals, reports…• http://www.cabi.org/home.asp• http://www.iucn.org/resources/index.cfm• http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/


Literature

Free content:• Journals:

– All free content: • The directory of open access journals:

http://www.doaj.org/E.g., Zoological Studies, Raffles Bulletin, Science Asia,…

(but check level: http://scientific.thomson.com/mjl/)– Some free content: e.g., Zootaxa, J. Nat Hist., …– Free abstracts: all

• Don’t be shy to request reprints!


Biodiversity Information:what we’re talking about

Biodiversity DATA:• What: Taxonomic / nomenclature data • Where: Distribution / Geographical info (Georeferenced)

• Additional information (ecology, natural history, sequences, …)

Focus on primary species and species-occurrence data


METADATA (data on the data):• Who, When, What (descriptive data –

references)?

Biodiversity Information what we’re talking about

Accuracy Precision (or resolution)


Biodiversity Information why we’re talking about it

• Biodiversity data are scattered in space and time• Need for data for science, conservation,

management

• Policy:– OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy

(CSTP), 22-23 June 1999: GBIF. – EU and G8 + 5 Env. Ministers Conf. on Climate,

Biodiversity, 15-17 March 2007 “Potsdam Initiative – Biological Diversity 2010”: encourages development of Global Species Information System (GSIS).

– EO Wilson’s TED price wish: EoL.– …


Names and taxonomy:The Global Names Architecture

The taxonomic backbone


Names…

world register of published animal names based on zoological record (Thompson

zoological)

An initiative of the ICZN


…and literature

universal Biological indexer and organizer

Taxonomic name server Namebank contains undisputed nomenclature metadata,

classificationbank stores alternative classifications Includes and links between scientific and vernacular names Initiative within science library community (Woods hole,

Massachusetts)


Catalogue of Life

Goal: a catalogue of all known species of organisms (by 2011) Partnership of:

Species2000: federation of taxonomic database custodians, largely EUR and Asia-Oceania

Integrated Taxonomic Information Service (ITIS - US, Can, MX) CODATA’s (Committee on Data for Science and Technology,

ICSU) Global Species Data Networks (Sp2000) Brings together 47 databases, most GSDs; 1M+


Global Species Databases

Biosystematic Database on World Diptera

1350 citations, 1460 collaborators

25 M hits/month


Regional Species Databases

European Nature Information System (EUNIS)


Topical Species Databases


The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment

• Global analysis of diversity of freshwater animals

• Global lists of species• Taxonomic scope• Tool for science, conservation, management• A (1) topical, (2) global species database

• Contributes to the Catalogue of Life


• An assessment of the biodiversity of the freshwater animals of the world

• Browse, search, download lists of freshwater species

• Upload locality GIS coordinates• Visualise on Google Map and Earth

The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment


The FADA portalhttp://fada.biodiversity.be


Searching the FADA portal


FADA search results


Visualisation of data


Species and distributions:Global Species Infrastructure

System

Going beyond the list


GBIF

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Goal: free and open access to biodiversity information Participants: countries, economies, organizations Programs: DADI, DIGIT, ECAT, OCB Gives access to 160 M+ occurrence records, 7500+ data sets


For the oceans

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System

Goal: make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available (incl. depth, vert. distribution,…)

Established by the Census of Marine Life (CoML) program, an alliance of people and organizations Participant in GBIF, specialized in ocean data


Something on nuts and bolts…

• IUBS commission for taxonomic databases, the standardization body for biodiversity informatics

• Cooperates with CODATA’s Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) task group

• Standards! ABCD, ABCDEFG, TAPIR (TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval), geographical, ….


Society for the Management of Electronic Biodiversity Data

• Foster electronic publication of biodiversity data• Archiving of electronic biodiversity data• Networking between databases• Professional society; members: database

custodians of ERMS, Fauna Europaea, Euro+Med plantbase

Society for the Management of European Biodiversity Data


Future developments(From the website of the European Commission > Research > International

Cooperation)

Environment ministers want a GSIS During their meeting from 15-17 March 2007, G8+5 Environment Ministers support the “Potsdam Initiative – Biological Diversity 2010”, which encourages the development of a 'Global Species Information System'.

Three major global 'backbones' of a GSIS

• The Catalogue of Life ( CoL) partnership (Species2000, ITIS)• The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) • The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)


Future developments

« an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth available everywhere by single access on command »

EO Wilson’s « TED prize » wish Launched May 9, 2007; budget 50M$

(NSF, Sloan F, MacArthur F); Focus on bioinformatics infrastructure First pages 2008, 10yrs


Future developments

A free directory of life

An open, free directory of species by the Wikimedia foundation Content: 108,797 articles

Wikispecies is free, because life is public domain!


Towards an impact factor and citation index for databases…

Hue University Rotifer Taxonomy workshop 6-12 March 2010 Global internet resources for taxonomists...

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