Other Projects and Websites

Biodiversity Insight Systems - Predicting species distributions from environmental parameters and known collection localities.

Electronic Field Guide - An Object Oriented WWW Database to Identify Species & Record Ecological Observations. Develops the technology to put identification keys on portable devices and enabling field observation data to be added to our knowledge of life in situ.

National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) -- An informatics program of the Biological Resources Division (BRD) of USGS. The NBII is much broader than systematics. Also contains a good compilation of important websites for systematics.

Taxonomic Expertise and Resources Directory (TRED) & Directory of Research Systematics Collections (DRSC) -- a joint project of the Association of Systematics Collections (ASC) and the NBII; searchable databases of taxonomists and systematics collections. Information compiled from a questionnaire survey.

Treebase - a database of phylogenetic trees and the data sets from which they were derived.

Tree of Life - a multi-authored description of life on earth using the phylogenetic relationships among organisms as the organizing principle.

Biological Management Systems. OCLC (Dublin, Ohio) and how these fit into Regional and Thematic (fisheries, migratory birds) Groups and Informatics e.g. tool development).

Some Key Government Agencies: Mexican Commission on Biodiversity (CONABIO), UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Biological Resources Division of the US Geological Survey (USGS), USGS International Biological Informatics Program, Smithsonian Institution Department of Biology and Botany (are beginning an inventory starting with BCA (Biologica Centro America) and Flora Meso America) that can thereafter be updated.

Cataloging and standardizing

IT IS - Standardized Nomenclature (Mostly US Government)

"Catalogue of Life"=Species 2000 -- Catalogue all known species (1.75 million) (Public, private, academic community)

AllSpecies - Catalogue all species yet unidentified (by 2025, likened to Human Genome Project) (Private Sector initiative)