Meeting Abstract
P2.18 Tuesday, Jan. 5 Antarctic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian: one-stop shopping HAMMOCK, J.; LEMAITRE, R.*; HARASEWYCH, M.G.; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution hammockj@si.edu
The Antarctic Invertebrates website, http://invertebrates.si.edu/AntIZ.htm, is the online portal to detailed specimen information, maps, DNA sequences and multimedia for Southern Ocean invertebrates collected by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) and other programs and housed at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Modern web development and informatics tools have allowed us to provide worldwide access to the complete dataset for this collection. Present tools include taxonomic, bibliographic and station data searches, mapping of combined species and/or station data, searches of co-occurring species, and historical information about Antarctic research. The bibliography and catalog are cross-referenced and inter-navigable. Nearly half the species have photographs or micrographs and full text original descriptions, and a growing subset have DNA barcodes. Specimens are linked to their high-res images in the NMNH online catalog and to their barcodes in the Barcode of Life Database. The website presently serves data only for the NMNH collection. In the next round of web-development in 2010, we will begin serving data for other institutions who wish to share their collections online. The present map function will be replaced by an ArcGIS platform which will permit the pooling of new map data- including bottom type, bathymetry and SST- with specimen data. USAP map data will be served through the website and incorporated into the searches. (eg.: search for sponges on sandy bottoms below 1000m). Users with GIS software will be able to download map and specimen data and combine it with their own datasets for desktop analysis. We believe this combined dataset will greatly facilitate research into questions of systematics, ecology and biogeography in the Southern Ocean.
