Whats it got to do with us

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Taxonomy on the Web integrating the pieces
Chris Lyal The Natural History Museum,
London Anna Weitzman Smithsonian Institution,
Washington
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Global needs

• More and more calls for information about species
  
• What is this?
• What species live in my country / national park?
• What species are eating my crops?
• What happens to them if I manage the environment?

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We are still trying to find the answers
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Integrating what we know

• This will
• liberate an amazing amount of information about
  1.78 million described species
• build a solid foundation for future work
• speed up what we are doing now
• Change the ways in which we publish

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What do we need to join together?

• Specimens
• Descriptions
• Observations
• Molecular data
• Distributions
• Publications on taxonomy and the rest of biology
• Pictures
• NAMES the uniting feature

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Where in the information stored?

• Specimen collections
• Databases
• Publications
• Observations
• grey literature
• Index cards
• Field notebooks

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What do we need to do?

• Label each piece of information (LSIDs)
• Enable information of compatible types to be
  joined
• Provide a measure of fitness for use
• Develop an infrastructure
• so that
• anyone, anywhere, can access the information
• and
• get answers to their questions in a way that
  suits them.

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What does this need?

• Global partnerships of scientists, publishers,
  data managers, users
• Interoperable XML schemas for specimens, names,
  concepts, literature (TDWG)
• International indexing system to access them
  (GBIF)
• Unique identifying numbers to lead back to
  verifiable data (TDWG, GBIF, ZooBank)
• Develop an economic model

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Naming and describing in the future

• Describe new species using XML schemas
• Register with ZooBank ensures code compliance,
  name stability, rapid access by others
• Description placed on server or in suitable
  journal
• Community peer-review system

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Naming and describing in the future

• Its there a new species description, which can
  be
• included in on-line journal
• be stand-alone
• Associated dynamically to the specimens on which
  it was based, and tools to analyze data
• Journal articles can refer back to these
  information sources - dynamically

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Summary

• We are moving rapidly to a taxonomic webspace
• In this webspace specimen data, images,
  descriptions, names and much else will be
  accessible as the user needs
• Elements of the webspace will come from current
  publishers, as well as legacy information
• Citations can be automatically handled and
  citation rates will rise
• Today we are seeing another key piece of the
  jigsaw unveiled

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INOTAXA INtegrated Open TAXonomic Access