The PLANKTON*NET data provider at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research is an open access repository for plankton-related information. It covers all types of phytoplankton and zooplankton from marine and freshwater areas. PLANKTON*NET's greatest strength is its comprehensiveness as for the different taxa image information as well as taxonomic descriptions can be archived. PLANKTON*NET also contains a glossary with accompanying images to illustrate the term definitions. PLANKTON*NET therefore presents a vital tool for the preservation of historic data sets as well as the archival of current research results. Our OAI-PMH compliant data provider represents a node within the distributed repository architecture originally planned in EU-funded project "Plankton*Net" (visit www.planktonnet.eu). This repository, together with the other other planned nodes (planktonet@roscoff and planktonnet@lisbon) are being harvested daily by a service provider specifically dedicated to the task of disseminating plankton-related records to a vast audience (visit www.planktonnet.eu/portal). In addition, we are currently working on making Plankton*Net repositories also harvestable by GBIF using the BioCASe protocol. ... [Information of the supplier]
