CATE stands for Creating a Taxonomic e-Science and is a project funded by the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under its e-science initiative. The particular goal of CATE is to test the feasibility of creating a web-based, consensus taxonomy using two model groups, one from the plant and the other from the animal kingdom. The wider aim is to explore practically the idea of 'unitary' taxonomy (see below) and promote web-based revisions as a source of authoritative information about groups of organisms for specialist and non-specialist users.The project team is from a consortium composed of the Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, University of Oxford and Imperial College London (NERC Centre for Population Biology). Kew's major collaborator for the providing taxonomic information on the Araceae is Dr Thomas B Croat and his Araceae research centre at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, USA. ... [Information of the supplier]
The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy, EDIT, is the collective answer of 27 leading European, North American and Russian institutions to a call of the European Commission, issued in 2004, for a network in « Taxonomy for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research ». This project has started on the 1rst of March 2006 and will last 5 years. Taxonomy provides the basis for understanding biodiversity. Overcoming the taxonomic impediment involves both having enough trained taxonomists and having taxonomic information available to those who need it. The project objectives are to help to reduce the fragmentation in European taxonomic research and expertise and to coordinate the European contribution to the global taxonomic effort, in particular the Global Taxonomy Initiative, through an integrated initiative aimed at improving society’s capacity for biodiversity conservation. ... [Information of the supplier]
With nearly 150,000 described species, flies (the insect order Diptera), are among the most diverse groups of living organisms on the planet. This diversity transcends simple species numbers and is demonstrated in the great breadth of morphological, ecological, and behavioral variation found in the group. Flies have a deep evolutionary history that extends back to the Permian Period, over 250 million years ago. The FLYTREE project is an international research collaboration funded by the US National Science Foundation, to elaborate and discover the details of fly relationships and diversity with the ultimate goal of providing a newly resolved phylogeny for this major branch of the Tree of Life. ... [Information of the supplier]
One of the first steps in discovering and understanding biodiversity is to identify the organisms around us. Traditionally, this has been done using paper-printed keys which enable us to correctly name an organism. Most of them, however, are "difficult" and hardly usable for educational purposes. KeyToNature is developing a range of new, much easier and paper-free identification tools, for use within schools and universities across Europe. They are available on a variety of platforms including laptops and mobile phones, some of them can be tailored to individual requirements. The project mobilizes 14 partners from 11 EU countries, including leading centres in biology, pedagogy, education, and information technology. KeyToNature mainly addresses the formal education systems of Europe, from teachers to pupils, from primary schools to universities. ... [Information of the supplier]
INOTAXA ('INtegrated Open TAXonomic Access') is a web workspace in which taxonomic descriptions, identification keys, catalogues, names, specimen data, images and other resources can be accessed simultaneously according to user-defined needs. It will allow access to data held in multiple servers, and will use a distributed data model. If, in the future, the various nomenclatural Codes permit web publication of new taxonomic names and acts, INOTAXA will be able to integrate single descriptions placed on servers worldwide, so long as they are indexed through a registry such as operated by GBIF. INOTAXA is built on an XML schema, taXMLit, that is interoperable with similar data from other sources (e.g., taxonomic names, concepts and specimens). INOTAXA is working with TDWG to ensure that standard schemas are used. These will allow external interoperability with GBIF and access to GBIF-mediated data. INOTAXA is also working with ZooBank, and has the potential to serve data in the format required to submit data directly. INOTAXA will provide seamless access from the content to other systems, including GBIF, TROPICOS and Flora Mesoamericana. In this pilot site, there are only limited data sources (Sharp & Champion 1889-1911, Biologia Centrali-Americana (BCA), Coleoptera Volume 4, Part 3 and Hamilton, 2007, Omolabus Jekel in north and central America (Coleoptera: Attelabidae)). These works overlap taxonomically and, in addition, specimen data and some images from the Natural History Museum (London) have been added for some taxa, including all of those which overlap. A gazetteer of insect localities from the BCA has also been included. This pilot has only part of the functionality planned for INOTAXA. Currently that means only simple search functionality, although screens have been 'mocked up' with real data to show the functionality planned for development by June 2008. Future plans will soon be available at www.inotaxa.org. ... [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]
