February 2007 - tdwg - lists.tdwg.org

looking for experts
by Marten Winter 27 Feb '07

27 Feb '07

Dear TDWG members, We?d like to invite experts of any kind of expertise on alien species (e.g. distribution, data collections, policy, taxonomy etc.) to this registry: *European Alien Species Expertise Registry at* _www.europe-aliens.org_ <http://www.europe-aliens.org/> · Join one of the largest expertise registries · Use the information on nearly 1500 experts from 89 countries for more than 2800 taxa · 100-300 visits per day on our webpage Within the EU project DAISIE the European Alien Species Expertise Registry collects the expertise of experts for species that are actually alien in Europe or may become so. Thus, unlike its title, we want to gather the expertise of experts from all over the world, since species alien to Europe arrive from throughout the world. The expertise registry contains details for individual experts with respect to taxonomic expertise, geographic units, and thematic areas (such as distribution, conservation, restoration, ecology, economical impact, genetics, legislation, administration, management, control, pathways, transportation, physiology, and risk assessment). One of our purposes is to evaluate where areas of taxonomic expertise need to be developed. This large registry is also of considerable value when searching for expertise and for making contacts world-wide. The DAISIE registry is open to the public, for governmental bodies and for stakeholders. Please take the time to register at _www.europe-aliens.org_ <http://www.europe-aliens.org/>, then click on Alien Species Expertise Registry The registry is self explanatory, and it will take only 5 minutes. We would be grateful if you could forward this message to other experts potentially interested in joining this registry. Thank you very much, kind regards, Marten Winter -- *Marten Winter* ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ Department of Community Ecology Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH - UFZ Sektion Biozoenoseforschung Theodor-Lieser-Str. 4 D-06120 Halle (Saale) Germany phone: ++49 (0) 345 558-5316 / fax:++49 (0) 345 558-5329 E-mail: Marten.Winter(a)ufz.de <mailto:Marten.Winter@ufz.de> http://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=7081 *DAISIE* - Delivering Alien Invasive Species Inventories for Europe http://www.europe-aliens.org <http://www.europe-aliens.org/> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Das UFZ hat einen neuen Namen: Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH - UFZ The UFZ has a new name: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung GmbH - UFZ Registered Office: Leipzig Registration Office: Amtsgericht Leipzig Trade Register Nr. B 4703 Chairman of the Supervisory Board: MinDirig Hartmut F. Grübel Scientific Director: Prof. Dr. Georg Teutsch Administrative Director: Dr. Andreas Schmidt ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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TED-prize for EO Wilson: some thoughts regarding the future of science communication
by Donat Agosti 23 Feb '07

23 Feb '07

Sorry for crossposting: but I think the essence of the posting below ought to be discussed.. Donat EO Wilson recipient of the TED award http://www.ted.com/conference/flashpage.cfm?conferenceKey=2007 On March 8, EO Wilson will receive the TED Prize. It is a very prestigious award by the 1000 thought-leaders, movers and shakers in Technology, Entertainment and Design. The winners receive USD100,000 and can formulate a wish which the members of the TED community pledged to help to fulfill. Congratulations to Ed Wilson to yet another great award, another confirmation of his outstanding achievements! Let's speculate that Ed Wilson is going to fulfill his boyhood dream of an encyclopedia of life for ants. So, what would be needed to make this dream reality? Ants are already on of the best documented group of animals in the world. There is an online catalogue of all the ants of the world updated as soon as another species is added to the currently known 11,981 species. This includes a digital library linked to from the species citations to pdfs of all the non-copyrighted descriptions. Currently, all these over 4,000 publications are being transformed to text by the Internet Archive, and the special mark-up schema, taxonx. is added for species and treatments or the descriptions of the species. There are an estimated 6,500 species documented with high resolution, magnificent standard images, even well worth printing in large scale and hanging them on your wall. Through Brian Fisher's and Jack Longino's superb collecting efforts in such biologically important areas as Madagascar and Costa Rica, ants have most likely one of the best documented surveys for any group of animals world wide, easily accessible online. The evolution of ants is well documented through large scale DNA-based analysis. On top of this, data aggregator such as ispecies are using mash-up technologies to collect all these information automatically - information which is added by a large, sprawling community worldwide. This infrastructure and its content already has a broad impact beyond the ant world, especially into education and other life sciences sectors What is missing? There are three issues, that is building up and maintaining the global infrastructure, the transfer of legacy data, that is publications and specimen data into the digital realm, and the generation of new research as input into such a system, which . TED could help make advances in each of these three areas. Most likely, the biggest impact, and one with an impact well beyond ants alone, would be to get the TED crowd to agree to build up a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) repository and resolver for all the systematics legacy publications, the descriptions of the species, the species names, and the specimens. These are the basic building blocks of systematics through which the entire information on animals and plants could be pulled together now, but especially in a semantic Web or Web2.0 environment. It would also be the best complement to the Biodiversity Heritage Library by the large US and UK natural history museums and institutions which will free knowledge hidden in millions of published literature. Linking a statement with its evidence Such a DOI based system would allow linking any comment made on the distribution or behavior of a species to its original observation or reference specimen with an attached Global Positioning System record. This will allow to pinpoint not only the proper name of and the specimen itself, but also its precise geographic origin which is living up to and can made the best out of high resolution satellite or map data, such as now publicly available at Google-Earth. Mash-up technologies would allow getting all additional information needed automatically, such as DNA-BarCode sequence, conservation status, studies on the biology or medical use or the increasing number of images and movies on Youtube or Yahoo as examples. Open access to biodiversity knowlege An agreement by the publishers to allow open access to all the articles in their journal covering the description of species, or even better biodiversity and conservation will have a similar impact as the applications of DOI's. Alternatively, the use of specific mark-up in their journal articles, delimiting the description allowing automatic data mining and extraction and thus building up the global Encyclopedia of Life. Imaging Finally, taking images of all those groups of ants which are increasingly used in surveys and to measure the loss of biodiversity ought to be another priority, since images are by far the most important element to identify species. This would ideally complement ongoing world wide efforts by a rapidly increasing crowd of specialists and amateurs. Getting this infrastructure up would enable anybody in the world, from E.O. Wilson in his little home town in Alabama to any place in the developing world to participate in this feast of knowledge and motivate more people like Awatif Omer in Khartoum to pursue the discovery of new species in such places like Sudan. The usage of all this information by the crowd, rather then expert's opinion, would then decide what the most authoritative contributions are ------------ Catalogue of the ants of the World: http://antbase.org <http://antbase.org/> (in collaboration with the Hymenoptera Name Server): literature digitized with partial support from the Atherton Seidall Foundation at the Smithsonian Institution. Online scientific images of ants: http://antweb.org <http://antweb.org/> ; http://www.evergreen.edu/ants/AntsofCostaRica.html, http://mcz-28168.oeb.harvard.edu/mcz/FMPro Mashups: ispecies ( http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Proceratium+google <http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/?q=Proceratium+google&#x002 6;#x0026;submit=Go> &#x0026;submit=Go) and http://ispecies.blogspot.com/ Biodiversity Heritage Library: http://bhl.si.edu/ Taxonx: an example of a systematics specific mark-up schema: http://sourceforge.net/projects/taxonx An overview of the global ant community: http://antbase.org/ants/publications/21146/21146.pdf Dr. Donat Agosti Science Consultant Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum der Burgergemeinde Bern Email: agosti(a)amnh.org Web: <http://antbase.org/> http://antbase.org Blog: <http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/> http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/ Skype: agostileu CV <http://antbase.org/agosticv_2003.html> Current Location <http://antbase.org/agosti_loc_bern.kmz> Dalmaziquai 45 3005 Bern Switzerland +41-31-351 7152

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ZooBank Guiding Principles Document
by Richard Pyle 23 Feb '07

23 Feb '07

Greetings TDWGers: First, my apologies for the cross-posting (a sentence many of you will read three or four times in the next few minutes...) Attached to this email message is a PDF document representing a draft version of the "Guiding Principles and Policies" for the future development of ZooBank, the proposed electronic registry of Zoological names and nomenclatural acts, as governed by the ICZN Code. A copy of this document has also been temporarily placed at this URL: http://www2.bishopmuseum.org/iczn/docs/ZooBank-GPP.pdf A more permanent home for the evolving document will be posted as soon as it is established. Please take the time to review this document and provide comments, criticisms and questions. This message has been distributed to the ZooBank email list, ICZN email list, TAXACOM, and TDWG email lists. Please feel free to forward this message and the document to any individuals or discussion forums with an interest in the future development of ZooBank. As stated in the document itself, from this point forward the goal is to develop ZooBank in a completely transparent way, with as much community input as possible. All feedback via whatever mechanism is, of course, most welcomed! However, to help consolidate the discussions, as much of the feedback as possible should be posted through the ZooBank email list. Information for how to subscribe to that list and access its archives is available here: http://list.afriherp.org/mailman/listinfo/zoobank-list Obviously, feedback on any aspect of this document, or relating to ZooBank in general, will be gratefully received. In particular, however, it would be most helpful to receive comments on what minimal data attributes (and in what format) should be required in order for a record to be considered "verified", and what standards of quality control should be applied to such records. There will be a gathering of a number of ICZN Commissioners at the IUBS Meeting in Washington, D.C., in May (http://www7.nationalacademies.org/IUBS/), so it would be especially useful to have feedback before then. Aloha, Richard L. Pyle, PhD Commissioner, International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature Database Coordinator for Natural Sciences and Associate Zoologist in Ichthyology Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum 1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817 Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252 email: deepreef(a)bishopmuseum.org http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/staff/pylerichard.html

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The TDWG mailing list has moved
by Ricardo Pereira 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Dear TDWG list subscribers, Along with other TDWG on-line resources, the TDWG mailing list has now been moved to the new TDWG servers. This message has been sent using the new list to tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org. The new web address for the list is: http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg No action needs to be taken, except new messages to the TDWG list should be sent to tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org. TDWG thanks the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, Jim Beach and Rob Dewhirst in particular for kindly and efficiently running this list for us. Please email me for any further information on the TDWG lists. Best Wishes Ricardo Pereira TDWG Systems Administrator TDWG Infrastructure Project (TIP) ricardo(a)tdwg.org

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