Databases

The Amphibian Species of the World http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia/

A searchable database of amphibian species.

AmphibiaWeb is an online system that provides access to information on amphibian declines, conservation, natural history, and taxonomy.

Animal Diversity Web http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/index.html

Animal Diversity Web is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan.

Arctos http://arctos.database.museum/home.cfm

Arctos is an ongoing effort to integrate access to specimen data, collection-management tools, and external resources on the Web. Nearly all that is known about a specimen can be included in Arctos, and, except for some data encumbered for proprietary reasons, data are open to the public.

Barcode of Life http://www.boldsystems.org/views/login.php

The Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) is an online workbench that aids collection, management, analysis, and use of DNA barcodes. It consists of 3 components (MAS, IDS, and ECS) that each address the needs of various groups in the barcoding community.

Encyclopedia of Life http://www.eol.org/

The Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented effort to gather and share scientific knowledge about all living things in a single online resource.

Encyclopedia of Life - Resource Partners

Encyclopedia of Life - Research in Education

Faunmap http://www.museum.state.il.us/research/faunmap/query/

FAUNMAP is an electronic database documenting the late Quaternary distribution of mammal species in the United States. It has been developed at the Illinois State Museum (ISM) with support from the National Science Foundation (BSR-9005144).

FishNET http://www.fishnet2.net/

FishNet is a collaborative effort by natural history museums and other biodiversity institutions to establish a global network of Ichthyology collections.

Genbank (National Center for Biotechnology Information) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. GenBank^® is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) http://www.gbif.org/

GBIF enables free and open access to biodiversity data online.

HerpNET http://www.herpnet.org/

HerpNET is a collaborative effort by natural history museums to establish a global network of herpetological collections data.

Host-Parasite Database http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/host-parasites/index.html

This catalogue contains lists of the helminth parasites recorded under genus of host and is fully cross-referenced with parasite-host and bibliographic files. This database includes more than a quarter of a million host-parasite records extracted from 28,000 references. A partial implementation [lacking details on synonymy, comments (e.g. larva) and subject (keywords)] can be searched on-line.

iDigBio - Integrated Digitized Biocollections http://www.idigbio.org/portal

iDigBio is the National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Through ADBC, data and images for millions of biological specimens are being made available in electronic format for the research community, government agencies, students, educators, and the general public.

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species http://www.iucnredlist.org

The goals of the IUCN Red List are to identify and document those species most in need of conservation attention if global extinction rates are to be reduced and provide a global index of the state of change of biodiversity.

Mammal Networked Information System (MaNIS) http://manisnet.org/

With support from the National Science Foundation, seventeen North American institutions and their collaborators developed the Mammal Networked Information System. The original objectives of MaNIS were to 1) facilitate open access to combined specimen data from a web browser, 2) enhance the value of specimen collections, 3) conserve curatorial resources, and 4) use a design paradigm that can be easily adopted by other disciplines with similar needs. As an NSF-funded initiative, MaNIS has achieved these objectives while avoiding the need for long-term, external maintenance of the network and centralized data management.

National Parasite Collection (USDA) http://www.anri.barc.usda.gov/bnpcu/parasrch.asp

The USNPC, a national and international resource for systematic, taxonomic, diagnostic ecological and epidemiological research in parasitology has been continuously maintained by the USDA for over 100 years. The specimen collection is linked to extensive documentation for host occurrence, geographic range, and other core data with which to assess the current and historical distribution of parasites and pathogens.

NatureServ http://www.natureserve.org/getData/

NatureServe and its network of member programs are a leading source for reliable scientific information about species and ecosystems of the Western Hemisphere. This site serves as a portal for accessing several types of publicly available biodiversity data.

ORNIS http://www.ornisnet.org/

Over 5 million bird specimens are housed in North American collections, documenting the composition, distribution, ecology, and systematics of the world's estimated 10,000-16,000 bird species. Millions of additional observational records are held in diverse data sets. ORNIS addresses the urgent call for increased access to these data in an open and collaborative manner, and involves development of a suite of online software tools for data analysis and error-checking.

Paleobotany Project http://www.paleobotanyproject.org/default.aspx

This website contains over 1000 images of fossil plants spanning the late Cretaceous through early Eocene from the Western Interior of North America.

TIGR Reptile Database http://www.reptile-database.org/

This database is intended to provide information on the classification of all living reptiles by listing all species and their pertinent higher taxa. The database therefore covers all living snakes, lizards, turtles, amphisbaenians, tuataras, and crocodiles. It is supposed to be a source of taxonomic data, thus providing primarily (scientific) names, synonyms, distributions and related data. However, a limited number of species accounts contain links to external sources including pictures.

Tree of Life http://tolweb.org/tree/

The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists and nature enthusiasts from around the world. On more than 10,000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about biodiversity, the characteristics of different groups of organisms, and their evolutionary history (phylogeny).

VertNet http://vertnet.org/index.php

Currently, across four portals, there are 72 unique institutions globally with 59 more who have committed to or expressed interest in participating. Together, these networks provide open access to approximately 84.3 million vertebrate records.

Resources

Databases