Meeting Abstract

P1.29  Sunday, Jan. 4  Development of sustainable authoritative online species databases COSTELLO, MJ*; BOXSHALL, GA; BOYKO, CB; HOEG, JT; MARKHAM, J; APPLETANS, W; University of Auckland; Natural History Museum, London; American Museum of Natural History; University of Copenhagen; Arch Cape Marine Laboratory; Flanders Marine Institute m.costello@auckland.ac.nz

The internet provides great opportunities for making scientific information available to everybody everywhere. However, the range of information available on the internet can be bewildering for users. Unlike conventional print media, the authority behind the information is often unclear and there is no peer-review, when they were created is often not stated, and they may not be permanently maintained. Personal and institutional web pages may suffer from limited expertise in web page design and information management tools. A more ideal situation is where communities of experts collectively create and maintain online content in a database with long-term professional informatics support. The European Register of Marine Species created an online inventory of (almost) all marine species in Europe in which each taxon was edited by a peer-selected taxonomic expert. The editors formed the Society for the Management of Electronic Biodiversity Data (www.smebd.eu) to hold this IPR, and they collaborate with the Flanders Marine Institute (Belgium) which acts as the technical manager and host institution. This model has been expanded to create a World Register of Marine Species, with several associated all-taxon regional (European, Antarctic, North Atlantic) and all-environment (not just marine) global (e.g. Porifera, Cumacea, Isopoda) species databases. All species names are centralised in the common host database called Aphia. Editors are sought and invited by SMEBD, and they can directly control the content by editing it online. As the resource develops more editors are required to expand the content and keep it current.