Meeting Abstract

P2.15  Thursday, Jan. 5  Philippine Biodiversity Research and Education Outreach (PhilBREO) SILER, CD*; BROWN, RM; University of Kansas; University of Kansas camsiler@ku.edu

Biodiversity Research and Education Outreach – Philippines (PhilBREO) is an international education outreach program to bring biodiversity information and educational tools to the public using a multi-language and multi-disciplinary approach. The project will develop and implement the PhilBREO website to integrate studies of biodiversity, biogeography, education, and conservation. In addition to biodiversity information focused on species of amphibians and reptiles, the site will provide conservation-based education outreach tools. These tools will range from color photographs taken during biodiversity assessments, simple guides to the amphibian species of each forest site, keys for the identification of each species in the wild, and faunal inventories. These lists will allow for a better public understanding of the distribution of vertebrate diversity in the Philippines. In addition to English, all printed information in the guides will be translated into Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, in an effort to engage a greater percentage of communities and organizations in the Philippines. This effort is currently supported by an Encyclopedia of Life Rubenstein Fellowship to CDS aimed at developing species accounts for all amphibians and reptiles in the Philippines. The project has a number of international collaborators, and we welcome anyone interested in getting involved in the effort. The results of this project will become a large component of the PhilBREO website, and will be added to the databases of our collaborating organizations: Encyclopedia of Life, AmphibiaWeb, The Reptile Database. We encourage you to follow our progress on EOL, the PhilBREO website, or our PhilBREO LifeDesk.