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For further information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu
Embargo: 10 a.m. EST / 3 p.m. GMT, Tues. Feb. 26
Contacts: Terry Collins, +1-416-538-8712 or +1-416-878-8712, terrycollins@rogers.com
Diana Kenney, Marine Biological Laboratory, +1-508-289-7139; dkenney@mbl.edu
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EOL’s Data Partners
Some of EOL’s current data providers include:
FishBase (www.fishbase.org), a global information system with all you ever wanted to know about fishes. FishBase is a relational database with information to cater to different professionals such as research scientists, fisheries managers, zoologists and many more. The FishBase Website contains data on practically every fish species known to science. The project was developed at the WorldFish Center in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and many other partners, and with support from the European Commission. FishBase is serving information on more than 30,000 fish species through the EOL.
The Catalogue of Life Partnership (CoLp) (www.catalogueoflife.org), an informal partnership dedicated to creating an index of the world’s organisms. The Catalogue of Life provides different forms of access to an integrated, quality, maintained, comprehensive consensus species checklist and taxonomic hierarchy, presently covering more than one million species, and intended to cover all know species in the near future. They contain substantial contributions of taxonomic expertise from more than fifty organizations around the world, integrated into a single work by the ongoing work of the CoLp partners. The EOL currently uses CoLp as its taxonomic backbone.
Tree of Life web project (ToL) (www.tolweb.org), a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 9,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics. ToL pages are linked to one another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things. In the future, ToL Web will concentrate on supra-specific species pages and EOL on species-level pages.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (www.gbif.org), the world’s premiere source for information on biological specimen and observational data, providing on-line access to more than 135 million data records from around the world. GBIF is providing range maps for the EOL species pages.
AmphibiaWeb (http://amphibiaweb.org), an online system enabling anyone with a Web browser to search and retrieve information relating to amphibian biology and conservation. This site was inspired by the global declines of amphibians, the study of which has been hindered by the lack of multidisplinary studies and a lack of coordination in monitoring, in field studies, and in lab studies. One of its major goals is to encourage a shared vision for the study of global amphibian declines and the conservation of remaining amphibians.
The Solanaceae Source Web site (www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/solanaceaesource), the product of an ongoing five year project: Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) Solanum: A worldwide treatment. The aim of the project is to produce a worldwide taxonomic monograph of the species occurring within the plant genus Solanum (the potato and tomato family), organized by a robust phylogenetic framework. The project began in January 2004 and is just one of four inventories funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation at that time. The project is made possible through collaborations between Solanaceae specialists worldwide, with principal investigators from four research institutions in England and the United States.
All of these resources rely on the world’s taxonomists, the scientists who study and name species. It is only through their heroic efforts that a resource like the EOL could even be contemplated.
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