the encyclopedia of life: a web site for every species james edwards executive director, eol barcode...
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The Encyclopedia of Life: A The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web Site for Every SpeciesWeb Site for Every Species
James EdwardsJames EdwardsExecutive Director, EOLExecutive Director, EOL
Barcode of Life ConferenceBarcode of Life ConferenceTaipeiTaipei20 September 200720 September 2007
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The missing link in CBOL
• CBOL making excellent progress on:– Promoting barcodes– BOLD– Developing linkages with other projects– Adding barcode content– BARCODE standard– etc.
• One important component missing– Database of species information
Enter the Encyclopedia of Life
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What is the EOL?
• 21st century on-line encyclopedia about Earth’s biological species
• With information about all currently accepted species
• And the millions more still to be described • All presented in a common format• But user configurable• All freely available over the Internet• And accessible from a common portal• But with capability for users to develop their own
entry-points
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Encyclopedia of Life
• Core: a separate web site for each of Earth’s known species– Estimated to be 1.8 million validly known species
• Each site contains:– Introductory page for general public
• Vetted by experts• Source of the information indicated (“attribution”)• With links to the scientific literature
– Additional pages and entry points for diverse user groups
• Molecular & evolutionary biologists• Taxonomists• Horticulturists, bird watchers• Biodiversity-based industries (fisheries)• School children, teachers, citizen scientists
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Status of EOL
• Idea for EOL came from many people– Dan Janzen, Chris Thompson, ALL Species, E.O. Wilson …
• Until recently, IT technology was a limiting factor
• Current version of EOL launched May 2007
• 10-year cost ~ $70 m?
• $25 million committed by MacArthur and Sloan Foundations
• Cornerstone institutions pledged to raise additional $25 million
• Portal v1.0 to open in February 2008
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Partners
• All EOL’s activities are carried out in partnership with
– Organizations
– Institutions
– Individuals
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)
• Work with existing organizations to port information into EOL (“low-hanging fruit”)– FishBase--species page
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)
– Tree of Life Web--supraspecific pages
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)
– Catalogue of Life--default taxonomy
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 1
• Milestone:
– EOL portal, version 1, released in February 2008
• More than 30,000 species pages
• Possibly other pages (amphibians)
• Many thousand additional pages (e.g. supraspecific pages)
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 2
• Work with taxonomic communities to prepare species pages in their areas
– Oct. 2007--international meeting on plant species pages at Missouri Botanical Garden
• Aggregation (“mashup”) technology to pull information together for draft species pages
• Wiki technologies for page curators to authenticate data
– Curators will be identified as the authors of the pages
• Prepare versions of EOL that will work on all platforms, from desktops to handhelds
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 2
• Expected partners:
– Global Biodiversity Information Facility--specimen and observational data--maps
– BOLD
– Sequence databases
– National/international projects• Atlas of Living Australia• IUCN• Zoobank
– Taxonomic communities
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Plan to develop species pages--phase 2
• Milestone:
– Within five years, have
• 1 million species pages
– Of varying levels of completeness
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Other components of EOL
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
– Consortium of ten of the world’s largest natural history libraries
– Plan to digitize world’s scientific biodiversity literature
• Estimate 320,000,000 printed pages
• Have digitized and marked up > 2 million pages
– Taxonomic intelligence applied to all pages
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Other components of EOL
• Biodiversity Synthesis
– Look across the species sites and identify novel uses
• “Macroscope”
– Biodiversity Synthesis Center
– Collaborations with user groups
• E.g., pollinators, ageing
• Education and Outreach
– Schools at all levels
– Citizen scientists (amateur naturalists, birdwatchers, horticulturists, etc.
etc.)
• Tools to allow people to feed information back into the EOL
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A personal aside stimulated
by Benoit Dayrat
• Fully agree with:
– Need for an integrative approach to alpha taxonomy, coupled with
monographic analyses
– Insistence on having barcodes for all new types
– Importance of taxonomists moving from cottage-industry to
collaborative, on-line approach
• EOL, combined with resources being developed by EDIT and
CATE, can be a valuable tool in these changes
– Obviate each taxonomist spending time finding all the names again
– Will also empower scientists in developing countries by providing on-line
access to information and literature
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In conclusion
• Encyclopedia of Life will be an excellent resource for:
– Aiding taxonomic research
– Providing species-level information to everyone
– Weaving together the many excellent biodiversity initiatives and
programs
– Serving DNA barcode data
– Supporting decision makers
• It can serve as the species database for barcorders