Meeting Abstract

P1.79  Tuesday, Jan. 4  lizardbase: A new collaborative GIS and genomic resource for the scientific community HSIEH, S.T.*; KULATHINAL, R.J.; Temple University; Temple University sthsieh@temple.edu

Recent innovations in technology are providing the opportunity to generate new data and advance novel scientific questions. With the initial release of the green anole (Anolis carolinensis) genome in 2007, lizards are rapidly becoming a model system for interdisciplinary biological research. Similarly, recent advances in new geographic information systems (GIS) are allowing biologists to analyze the enormous amounts of existing data from detailed ecological, evolutionary, physiological, and functional morphology research. As a scientific community, we now are faced with the challenge of integrating and managing these data in a manner that makes it easily accessible, facilitating even greater scientific progress. Here, we present a web-based database, scientific collaboration, and outreach tool, lizardbase, which we have developed to fill this need for a centralized, consolidated informatics resource, connecting disparate areas of lizard research. Our goals are to use this site for facilitating scientific discovery and collaboration, while also increasing citizen involvement in the sciences. We will demonstrate the utility of this resource by presenting a case study for outreach based off data collected by grade 12 students at East Gainesville High School in Florida. We also demonstrate how this genomics and data-mapping portal can address tractable hypotheses from such diverse fields as functional morphology, invasion biology, and evolutionary genetics.