Dear Roderic D. M. Page,

Congratulation for your 'Taxonomic Search Engine' portal.

I maintain a database on tropical crustacea on the Internet (link in my signature) and I am interested to know if your project could include (or point to) that particular database?

For example, when I hit 'Calcinus' in your portal I am redirected to ITIS data. Is it possible also to get the list of species that is obtained when 'Calcinus' is entered in the field genus of request form at: http://decapoda.free.fr/search_data.php ?

Sincerely.

Roderic D. M. Page a écrit:

As a test of various tools for querying multiple taxonomic name databases I've created a "Taxonomic Search Engine" (http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/ ) that may be of interest.

The site will search external databases (currently ITIS, Index Fungorum, IPNI, and uBio) for a name. If it finds the name, you can click on the name to get more details, including a link to the original web site that provided the name.

Some examples to try are "Morus", "Physeter macrocephalus", and "Apus apus".

Behind the scenes the application talks to each database in turn and outputs the result in a consistent format (or, as consistent as the very different database outputs will allow).

The search engine also outputs Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) for each name. Followers of recent discussions on "GUIDs" (Globally Unique Identifiers) for taxonomic names will know that LSIDs are one candidate for assigning a GUID to a name. The search engine provides one way to explore the utility of LSIDs (including links to tools for viewing them).

I'd welcome comments/feedback. Future plans include adding more databases and improving search performance using caching.

Regards

Rod Page

--

Professor Roderic D. M. Page Editor Elect, Systematic Biology DEEB, IBLS Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QP United Kingdom

Phone: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html

Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org

-- ____________________________________________________ POUPIN Joseph - Systèmes d'Information Géographiques Institut de Recherche de l'Ecole Navale Ecole Navale et GEP, LANVEOC - POULMIC BP 600, F29240 BREST ARMEES FRANCE 02 98 23 37 57 - Fax (33) 02 98 23 38 57 - poupin@ecole-navale.fr

Polynesian Decapoda at: http://decapoda.free.fr/