AbstractIn order to perform useful biological, palaeoclimatological, or stratigraphic work, one must accurately and consistently define the fundamental biological taxonomic units. The taxonomy of the Foraminifera has been in constant flux for more than 200 years, since entering the scientific literature misclassified as tiny cephalopods by Linneaus in 1758. This problem persists to the present day, and every indication suggests it will likely continue in the future. The standard taxonomic reference for the group, Loeblich and Tappan's 1987 Foraminiferal Genera and Their Classification, while an excellent reference, is nearly 20 years out of date, becoming more so all the time, and classifies only to genus level. One striving for an accurate suprageneric classification must supplement it with numerous updates, revisions, additions, and emendations, including Loeblich and Tappan's 1992 “Present status of foraminiferal classification,” and Sen Gupta's 1999 “Systematics of Modern Foraminifera.” Modern genetic techniques and consequent taxonomic conceptions mean these groupings will shift all the more often. Accurate species-level classification requires a vast and growing, not to mention often conflicting, library of references.

The proposed solution to this taxonomic quagmire is an online database of foraminiferal taxonomy. Such a database would provide the benefits of being hierarchical, easily searchable, widely and easily available, and always up to date. Additionally, it would bring together descriptions from multiple sources for comparison, provide a variety of taxon images (light micrograph, SEM, etc.) from descriptions and other sources, and could be linked to genetic information available in GenBank and elsewhere. It would be an invaluable resource to researchers attempting to identify foraminiferans. A prototype of such a database is being constructed at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, presently containing Recent, mostly larger Pacific, Foraminifera. However, this database could easily be expanded to contain any number of the perhaps 4000 Recent and 10,000 fossil taxa.

PROPOSAL FOR AN ONLINE DATABASE OF FORAMINIFERAL TAXONOMYBryan James McCloskey (bryanm@marine.usf.edu)

College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, 140 Seventh Ave. S., St. Petersburg, FL 33701QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Features of the Database of Recent Foraminifera• Complete taxonomic guide to currently recognized taxa of extant Foraminifera, down to

the Superfamily level• 15 Orders and 56 Superfamilies• Next to expand to include the ~185 extant Families

• MySQL database, accessed by a collection of PHP scripts

1. Taxon name, rank, describer, and parent and subsidiary taxa

2. Original, currently accepted, and supplementary descriptions

3. Relevant images to aid in identification, linked to further images of that taxon and from

that reference

4. Relevant references pertaining to each taxon, linked to a general list of references, with

electronic copies to download, as available

5. Keywords linked to a glossary of foraminiferal vocabulary collected and combined from a

number of standard foraminiferal references

6. Currently searchable by taxon; potentially searchable by author, description text, etc.

Fig. 1. The current state of on-line foraminiferal taxonomy. The University of Arizona’s laudable Tree of Life web project, among whose stated goals are to “[provide] information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history [. . .], and characteristics,” currently reduces the entire 10,000+ species taxonomy of the Foraminifera to five words. The aim of this project is to improve on this status.

ConceptForaminifera are an extremely important and diverse taxon, with important uses in the fields of biostratigraphy, paleoclimatology, carbonate geology, and the evolution of basal eukaryotes. Due to their general character of possessing a hard test, they have an excellent fossil record, and therefore have one of the best taxonomies of all unicellular eukaryotic groups. However, this taxonomy is constantly changing, and its historical basis is spread across hundreds of rare, difficult to find references, often hundreds of years old and written in a dozen languages (for instance, Foraminifera were first reported by Herodotus and Pliny the Elder, were first illustrated in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, and 15 species of them were included in the twelfth edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae). This project endeavors to create an online resource containing historical taxonomic information, currently accepted descriptions, images useful for identification, biogeographic and biostratigraphic information, and newly obtained molecular information. The electronic nature of this resource means that it is easily updatable as new information is obtained, and gives researchers convenient and usable access to accurate taxonomic information. This database is currently essentially complete to superfamily level, and will soon be available online at http://www.marine.usf.edu/reefslab/foram_taxonomy/

Changing these

Into thisFig. 2. (Above.) Taxonomic references can be unwieldy, voluminous, fragile, rare, old, difficult to obtain, and/or valuable. Especially old references, including those with particular historic value, such as those by Carolus Linnaeus, Robert Hooke, Alcide d’Orbigny, and Ernst Haeckel, become more rare, faded, and fragile each year, and run the risk of being lost forever if not preserved digitally. This project aims to consolidate these hundreds of paper-based references into an easy-to-use online database.

Fig. 3. (Above and left.) Early taxonomies have historical and artistic importance, and should be preserved and made available to the general public. These beautiful prints are from a collection by Ernst Haeckel, one of the preeminent members of the 19th century school of German naturalists, and one of the greatest scientific illustrators in history.

Fig. 4. (Right.) An example taxon description from the Database of Recent Foraminifera showing the principle components currently contained therein. Descriptions of the numbered elements can be found in the “Features” section.

Project Goals

• To provide a convenient and easy-to-use tool for up-to-date foraminiferal taxonomy and

identification

• To bring together and translate into English often old, rare, valuable, and/or hard-to-find

original descriptions for convenient use and distribution to researchers

• To electronically preserve important scientific, historic, and artistic information that

otherwise runs the risk of being lost or fading further into obscurity

• To consolidate descriptive, imagery, taxonomic, geographic, stratigraphic, and molecular

data into one easily-accessible location

• To bring traditional, morphology-based taxonomy in line with phylogenies obtained from

modern molecular techniques (i.e., to create a monophyletic taxonomy)

Project Difficulties

• Obtaining original or high-quality copies of old, rare, obscure, and/or delicate references• Translating references originally written in Latin, French, Italian, German, Russian, and

Spanish into English

Anyone interested in participating in this project; with access to rare foraminiferal references; with translating, programming, or databasing skills; or with general questions, comments, or suggestions, is invited to contact the author.

Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by an NSF grant to the Biocomplexity Work Group (http://www.biocomplexity.usf.edu/), and by Paul L. Getting and Robert M. Garrels Fellowships in Marine Science from the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science.

ReferencesLoeblich, A. R., Jr. and H. Tappan. 1987. Foraminiferal Genera and Their Classification. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold

Company, 1182 p.Loeblich, A. R., Jr. and H. Tappan. 1992. Present status of foraminiferal classification. Proceedings of the Fourth

International Symposium on Benthic Foraminifera, Sendai, 1990. Tokai University Press, Studies in Benthic Foraminifera: 93-102.

Sen Gupta, B. K. 1999. Systematics of Modern Foraminifera. In Sen Gupta, B. K. (ed.) Modern Foraminifera. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 7-36.

Fig. 5. An example of images electronically preserved and stored along with caption information in the database. These particular images are from Edwin Lankester’s article “Protozoa” in the 9th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica from 1909.