Scratchpads are an easy to use, social networking application that enable communities of researchers to manage, share and publish taxonomic data online. Sites are hosted at the Natural History Museum London, and offered free to any scientist that completes an online registration form. Key features of the Scratchpads include tools to manage: Classifications / Phylogenies / Bibliographies / Documents / Image galleries / Custom data / Specimen records / Maps. Users control who has access to content, which is published on the site under Creative Commons (by-nc-sa) license. ... [Information of the supplier]
LifeDesks are dynamic web environments that make the online management and sharing of biodiversity research easier than ever. Through them, you can shape the Encyclopedia of Life by contributing to the ongoing effort to document the world's species. [Information of the supplier]
Scientific names of organisms are not usually known for their entertainment value. They are indispensable for clarity in communication, but most people skip over them with barely a glance. Here I collect those names that are worth a second look. Some names are interesting for what they are named after (for example, Arthurdactylus conandoylensis, Godzillius), some are puns (La cucaracha, Phthiria relativitae), and some show other kinds of wordplay (such as the palindromic Orizabus subaziro). Some have achieved notability through accident of history, and many show the sense of humor of taxonomists. Home brings you back here. Rules gives a brief overview of the rules governing biological naming (and, along the way, includes several curious examples). Etymology lists names that are notable for what they are named after. Puns lists names which are unusual for how they sound. Wordplay includes all unusual features of names other than their meaning and pronunciation. Gene Names lists a few of the interesting names which have been given to genes. Misc. includes things which do not fit elsewhere, including other curious biological terms, interesting stories about names, and some creative writing. References includes also links, acknowledgements, and a list of the newest entries. ... [Information of the supplier]
Carolus Linnaeus (also Carl von Linné, 1707–1778) was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist whose work laid the foundations of modern biological systematics and nomenclature. Long before Linnaeus, classical science was important in the shaping of subsequent science in the West. Transmitted through the cultures of the Mediterranean area, classical science was recovered during the Renaissance and ensuing Scientific Revolution, and undergirded the search for a new botanical system. Drawing on the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, Linnaeus developed a coherent system for describing, classifying and naming organisms. Linnaeus’ students traveled the globe to explore and collect information and specimens. Aspects of the Linnaean system have enabled amateurs and professionals worldwide to identify, name and describe plants for more than two centuries. ... [Information of the supplier]
This is a glossary of over 2,100 terms used in biological nomenclature - the naming of whole organisms of all kinds. It covers terms in use in the current editions of the different internationally mandated and proposed organismal Codes; i.e. those for botany (including mycology), cultivated plants, prokaryotes (archaea and bacteria), virology, and zoology, as well as the Draft BioCode and PhyloCode. The print version of the book is available online as a PDF document. Hard copies are planned with availability options currently under evaluation. GBIF also provides a web application serving the content of Terms Used in Bionomenclature. The web application features flexible search and browse capabilities with convenient grouping of terms around nomenclatural codes and term types. In addition, the glossary can be browsed and referenced using Semantic Web (Linked Data) features. ... [Information of the supplier]
EU-nomen enables the correct use of species names and their classification to more accurately manage information on animals and plants. This is the first all-taxon inventory of all European species. PESI provides standardised and authoritative taxonomic information by integrating and securing Europe’s taxonomically authoritative species name registers and nomenclators (name databases) and associated exper(tise) networks that underpin the management of biodiversity in Europe. PESI defines and coordinates strategies to enhance the quality and reliability of European biodiversity information by integrating the infrastructural components of four major community networks on taxonomic indexing into a joint work programme. This will result in functional knowledge networks of taxonomic experts and regional focal points, which will collaborate on the establishment of standardised and authoritative taxonomic (meta-) data. ... [Information of the supplier]
The Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG) is a project of OBIS Australia designed to assist in the provision of marine species data to OBIS, by permitting the discrimination of marine from nonmarine (and extant from fossil) species records on the basis of the genus name portion of their scientific name (normally, genus + species, or genus + species + infraspecies if applicable). The aim of the project is to (a) assemble as complete a list as possible of the estimated 150,000 extant and 50,000 fossil generic names in current use, plus perhaps 250,000-300,000 synonyms, and (b) flag as many of these as is possible with their marine/nonmarine, and extant/fossil, status. IRMNG also includes a subset of known species names in the world (around 1.4m as at May 2009), with appropriate flags in perhaps 50% of cases. ... [Information of the supplier]
ZipcodeZoo.com aspires to be a useful Field Guide to plants and animals of the world. Often, to be useful, a field guide must have a sense of where you are and what might be found there. Our natural world is rapidly losing its diversity and abundance. To slow this loss, and to better appreciate the natural world, we must begin with local nature. ZipcodeZoo works to bring the natural world to armchair, amateur, and professional naturalists. Our focus is Applied Biogeography: understanding plants and animals in their place, perhaps even your backyard. We want to build an online field guide suited for the amateur naturalist. Here are highlights of what we have done so far: a) We've added information on 2,646,557 species from around the world. Zipcode Zoo is not just for Americans (and more than half our visitors don't live in the land of zipcodes.) b) We've been gathering field observations -- 127,715,643 so far -- and mapping them with the help of Google, to help you see exactly where a plant or animal has been reported. c) Finding just the right species in all of this can be like finding a needle in a haystack. A Proximity Lister and a Region Lister will help you find plants or animals in a geographic area of interest. PlantFinder offers 19 criteria to narrow your selection of plants. PlantFinder's database currently includes 1,555,827 attributes for 209,411 of the 1,105,429 plants on this site. BirdFinder uses location and 102,204 attributes for 4,753 birds. d) We've added popup definitions for 236,201 terms. For many terms such as "abdominal", the popup definition pronounces the term. Short definitions such as that for "entire" simply popup on mouse over, then go away. Other definitions, such as that for "abdominal" open in small windows. e) We've built localized lists of Invasives Near You and Threatened Near You to list local Invasives and threatened species. f) We've made a start at sorting through identifications with Key, a tool that helps you step through kingdom, phylum, class, order, and family to help you decide what species you have at hand. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
To date, the three major Codes of type-based organismal nomenclature have been developed with almost an exclusive attention to the needs and history of names for their focal set of organisms (animals, plants, prokayotes). The newly released draft of a BioCode, presented here, aims to provide a framework for the existing Codes to grow towards each other in the future and promote common rules to minimise confusion among names of any organism. It is a collaborative effort by representatives of each major organismal Code. It is, in this respect, a largely forward-looking document. ... [Information of the supplier]
Welcome to Online Taxonomic Keys, a joint project of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Royal BC Museum. This project seeks to facilitate the development of, and make readily available, a variety of regional and global identification keys in a format that is concise and easy to use. The information presented is compiled from published and unpublished works from taxonomic specialists worldwide. Taxonomic keys are important tools used by scientists and other investigators to identify specific organisms based on defining characteristics. Up until the last decade, these keys were most often published as dichotomous keys, in which specimens are identified by choosing from a progressive series of pairs of options until a solution is reached. While dichotomous keys are still universally used, the online arena provides the opportunity to design and use keys based on a character matrix. The identification keys on this site are based on a character matrix format. Specimens may be identified by selecting one or more character states (columns) for each character (rows). As selections are made a list of possible species identifications will appear at the bottom of the matrix. Clicking on the species name opens an information sheet with more information to help you understand the specimen you’ve identified. This library of identification keys is a work in progress, and will grow and expand as new keys become available. ... [Information of the supplier]