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Story: ECAT Seed Money Awarded to 12 Projects
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Twelve projects were awarded a total of US$500,000 of GBIF seed money as a result of the ECAT Request for Proposals. Of these, 7 will result in worldwide nomenclators for groups as diverse as fungi and thrips.
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| Released on: |
19 September 2003 |
| Contributor: |
Meredith Lane |
| Language: |
English |
Spatial coverage: |
Not applicable |
Keywords: |
GBIF, ECAT, seed money |
| Source of information: |
GBIF Secretariat |
| Concerned URL: |
http://www.gbif.org/prog/ecat |
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ECAT4web
The ECAT Request for Proposals for seed money awards solicited the
following types of projects:
- Completion of projects that are close to being ready to add to
ECAT or the Catalogue of Life (CoL).
- Contribute to a global species database (GSD) by creating local
or partial lists of names
- Create GSD's for organism groups not yet part of ECAT/CoL Names
Service
- Start up community-building among taxonomists who work with
organisms that are not yet indexed
Proposals were evaluated for scientific excellence. In addition, they
were evaluated on how well they supported the GBIF philosophy by
demonstrating a commitment to making the resulting data freely
available and addressing issues of data compatibility and
interoperability. Review criteria included:
- Likelihood to produce results within a limited timeframe, and
potential for the earliest possible access to large data sets
- Feasibility
- Cost-effectiveness -- low cost per name
- Collaboration among institutions and/or organisations
- Potential for networking and building collaborative networks of
taxon specialists, with potential for training and capacity-building
- Linkage with existing projects (including projects with a DIGIT
aspect)
Successful completion of 7 of the 12 funded projects listed below will
result in worldwide nomenclators for several economically important
groups of organisms: fungi, weevils, flies and mosquitoes, shellfish
and squid, the rose family, scale insects, and thrips. Two other
projects will treat the lacewing insects of Africa, and the true bugs
and rove beetles of the world. Funding for three of the projects
will augment existing initiatives. The International Plant Names Index,
already online, will be improved by the addition of names of Asian
plants. Species 2000/Catalogue of Life will add 15 new databases, and
BIOSIS will take the first steps to adding all the pre-1978 zoological
names to their existing database of 1,400,000 names.
Titles of the 12 projects serve as links to
more detailed information below.
Project
Coordinator: Frank Bisby
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: Species 2000 Secretariat
University of Reading, UK
Title: Species 2000 and the Catalogue of Life: reaching production
scale worldwide
Abstract: In this GBIF project Species 2000 proposes to link an
additional 8-15 databases from around the world to the Species 2000
Annual Checklist and Dynamic Checklist (representing more than 50,000
species). The work involves four groups of tasks: i) peer review and
data scrutiny, ii) liaison and agreement on access to the data, iii)
wrapper writing to link to the SPICE hub software for the Dynamic
Checklist and iv) testing downloaded datasets (standard data fields
only) and incorporating into the Annual Checklist. The GBIF money will
provide support for tasks ii) and iii), that is actually linking and
integrating checklists from the supplier databases into the Annual and
Dynamic Checklists.
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Project
Coordinator: Motomi Ito
Amount: $30000
Managing Institution: Department of Systems Sciences
University of Tokyo, Japan
Participating Institutions: University of the Air, Japan; National
Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan; University of Tsukuba,
Japan; Lance Co. Ltd., Japan; Kyungpook National University, Korea;
Soeul National University, Korea; Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Royal Forest
Department, Thailand; Bogor Botanical Garden, Indonesian Institute of
Sciences(LIPI), Indonesia; Biodiversity Information Center, LIPI,
Indonesia
Title: Name Service for Vascular Plants by Networking of Taxonomic
Checklists throughout East Asia
Abstract: Although we recognize the great competence of the IPNI
project, we still find a large gap in its coverage of names between
regions, particularly in Asian plants. Thus, developing a regional
system for providing an Asian vascular plant name service and
collecting plant names in this region are urgent issues for GBIF. Our
project aims to develop a fundamental regional hub system for providing
names of vascular plants in East Asia. This will cover the scientific
names and synonyms qualified by experts in East Asia, including
vernacular names.
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Project Coordinator:
Mervyn W Mansell [Contract still under negotiation]
Amount: $15000
Managing Institution Plant Protection Research
Institute
Queenswood, South Africa
Title: Annotated Catalogue Of Afrotropical Lacewings
Abstract: [Not available yet]
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Project
Coordinator: Douglass Miller
Amount: $38500
Managing Institution: Systematic Entomology Laboratory
Department of Agriculture
Beltsville, MD, USA
Participating Institutions: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa,
Canada; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA;
Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), The Volcani Center, Israel
Department of Agriculture, Bet Dagan, Israel
Title: Completion of a Database on the Scale Insects of the World and a
Web System called ScaleNet
Abstract: Goals of the project are to provide detailed systematic
information on the scale insects of the world in a web-delivered
database system called ScaleNet. The query system allows clients to
tailor inquiries to their particular needs and requirements. GBIF
funding will allow for completion of the first round of data entry
including updates of all families that currently are online and new
data for the aspidiotine+ Diaspididae, the Margarodidae, and the
Asterolecaniidae. All new data will be added to ScaleNet as they are
synthesized, will be combined with the extensive information that
already is part of the system, and will be made public through the
internet.
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Project
Coordinator: Laurence Mound
Amount: $18140
Managing Institution: CSIRO Entomology
Canberra, Australia
Title: to prepare for web publication a synonymic list of world
species, general and families in the Insect Order Thysanoptera
Abstract: Description of goals: A web-based world list of the available
names in the Insect Order Thysanoptera will be made available,
including all currently accepted synonyms. The list will include
details of authors of names, together with the date of publication and
page. For the 7100 species-group names the original genus will be
provided as well as the current combination, and an indication of the
most recent authority for the taxonomic decision. For the 1200
genus-group names the type species will be given as well as the status
of that type selection.
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Project
Coordinator: Paul Kirk
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: CABI Bioscience
Egham, Surrey, UK
Title: AUGMENTING Index Fungorum: EXPANDING Species Fungorum
Abstract: The Index Fungorum (www.indexfungorum.org) global fungal
nomenclator will be augmented by completing the task of including
author citations and year of publication for all names and further by
linking all homotypic names through their basionym. The result will be
a fully internally consistent nomenclator. References to validating
protologues will be added as resources allow. The Species Fungorum
global fungal checklist will be expanded by the addition of taxonomic
opinion derived from the published literature in the form of revisions,
monographs and checklist. The goal is to account for at least 40%
(32,000) of the known species of fungi and preference will be given to
groups of ecological/biodiversity or
pathological/biosecurity/commercial significance, particularly those
with a relatively stable taxonomy.
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Project
Coordinator: Chris Lyal
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: The Natural History Museum
London, UK
Participating Institutions: Museo Nacional de
Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain
Title: A Global Checklist of Weevils (Insecta: Coleoptera:
Curculionoidea) as part of GBIF data provision
Abstract: Weevils are a hyper-diverse and economically-important group
of more than 70,000 beetle species, many of which are pests of
agriculture, horticulture and forestry, while others are used for
biological control or pollination. The Global Weevil Checklist Project
will deliver on the web (1) a database of weevil family names and genus
names (ca. 13,000 records) to provide a framework for later work and
make the basic classification widely available as rapidly as possible;
(2) a database of weevil species-group names (ca. 120,000 records),
together with references. Initially the species names will be taken
from secondary literature and unverified but during the course of the
project names and references will be checked against original
publications.
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Project Coordinator:
Richard Pankhurst
Amount: $43675
Managing Institution: Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Participating Institutions: Botanischer Garten
Berlin, Germany
Title: The ROSACEAE taxonomic database
Abstract: The Rosaceae database project will be a basic resource for
research and retrieval of information about this important flowering
plant family, which contains numerous food and ornamental plants. The
first aim is to complete the entry of all scientific names, with the
publication citation (34,400 so far). The second aim is to assign
status (accepted, or as synonyms) to as many names as possible. At the
completion of the phase of the project that is supported by GBIF the
data that is then held will be made available on the internet as part
of the IOPI Global Plant Checklist, and hence to the GBIF network.
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Project
Coordinator: Winston Ponder
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: Australian Museum
Sydney, Australia
Title: Towards a Global Database of Mollusca - a database of Indo-west
Pacific Mollusca
Abstract: Our primary objective is to produce a literature-based biotic
database of the living molluscan species of the Indo-west Pacific
(IWP). The database will provide not only a checklist of current
species names but will also provide information on classification,
synonyms, bibliographic details (including citations of published
illustrations and revisions), type localities, location of type
specimens, and summaries of distribution, biology and ecology. A
secondary objective of our overall program is to integrate existing
species databases for Western Atlantic and European marine molluscs
which, when combined with the Indo-Pacific Molluscan Database, will go
a long way towards producing a global database of Mollusca. Taxonomic
classifications, bibliographic data and summaries of distributions will
all be available via the following website:
(http://data.acnatsci.org/obis/), which is continually updated.
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Project Coordinator:
Nigel Robinson
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: BIOSIS UK
York, UK
Participating Institutions: BIOSIS, USA
Title: Supply and provide access to new animal names data derived from
Zoological Record
Abstract: As producer of the most comprehensive bibliographic life
science databases, BIOSIS has assembled a huge repository of organism
names, particularly as part of the Zoological Record (ZR) database.
While ZR has been published since 1865, only the data from 1978 to
present are available electronically. This project will begin the
digitization of the pre 1978 material, extracting new animal names from
40,000 (25%) of these pages (1970-1977), and make them, together with
the 1.4 million names already obtain from 1978 to present, freely
available through the BIOSIS GBIF NODE. Names recorded as new in ZR
1970-present will also be made available to GBIF for purposes of
seeding the e-CAT/CoL.
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Project
Coordinator: Randall T. Schuh
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: American Museum of Natural
History
New York, NY, USA
Title: Developing the Catalog of Life: Bringing the True Bugs and Rove
Beetles On Line (Insecta: Heteroptera; Coleoptera: Staphylinidae)
Abstract: The Heteroptera and Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) represent two
diverse insect lineages. Information in the form of taxonomic catalogs
structured as relational databases will be organized and for the first
time made available over the Internet. These catalogs will provide
complete information on nomenclatural history for the world faunas of
these two groups as well as providing access to a much wider range of
literature dealing with taxonomy and biology. The catalog of
Heteroptera will also provide information on host associations.
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Project
Coordinator: F. Christian Thompson
Amount: $50000
Managing Institution: Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC, USA
Participating Institutions: Systematic Entomology
Lab, USDA, USA
Title: The Biosystematic Database of World Diptera.
Abstract: The goals of the Biosystematic Database of World Diptera are
to provide an authoritative source for the names of flies (Insecta:
Diptera). Diptera, an insect order, represents about 10% of the World’s
biodiversity and is one of the most critically important groups in
respects to man. Given this diversity, information about Diptera is
critical for the proper utilization and management of our environment.
The Biosystematic Database of World Diptera provides a framework to
index and integrate current and future information and is a resource to
ensure that knowledge about flies is easily accessible to all. Today
over a quarter of million name records are available in a Nomenclator
with some 10,000 references. Specialists are ready to verify the data
and provide species attributes. GBIF ECAT program will provide
additional funding to accelerate the completion of the project. GBIF
funding will provide for the completion of the BDWD online presence and
at least 20,000 more names records certified to its highest standards.
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Please note that this story expired on 2003/10/19
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