Christina Flann
Species 2000
October 2014
Catalogue of Life
Indexing The World’s Known Species
Connecting the taxonomic community
and the names infrastructure community
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How Species 2000 started
Frank A. Bisby 1945 - 2011
“Let’s bring together theknowledge of the globaltaxonomic community in asingle shared authoritativesystem on species conceptsthat can be used by all”.
1996
© Peter Schalk, i4Life
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What is the Catalogue of Life?
A Resource …
•an electronic synonymic species checklist,
•a tightly integrated taxonomic hierarchy,
•intended for all 1.9 M extant known species
•currently covers almost 1.6 M and includes over 3M scientificnames from kingdom to infraspecific taxa
…. constructed through international collaboration
•checklist and hierarchy constructed from sectors from manynetworked taxonomic databases around the world
•and integrated via scrutiny by international editorial panel
© Peter Schalk, i4Life
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•Hosting agreement (Naturalis, Netherlands) for Species 2000Secretariat - Executive Secretary, Administrative &Finance Officer, facilitation of CoL e-infrastructure andbasic services (5 years with roll-over)
•Funding by Univ. of Illinois, US for Executive Editor(Permanent)
•Funding for Database Manager in Philippine Office(5 years with roll-over)
•Hosting CoL services by third parties i.e. Cross-mappingTool, Cardiff University, Wales (5 years with roll-over)
Long Term Sustainability of CoL
© Peter Schalk, i4Life
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What remains to be done?
85% is great, but need 100% asap
Gaps need to be clearly identified and filled
Users require fully synonymised lists
Global Species Databases, GSDs representopinion of expert taxonomic community
Remaining gaps mostly have no GSD
Work together with all taxonomic namesinitiatives to complete the CoL
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© Christina Flann, 2014
What remains to be done?
Continued emphasis on content
Support needed for GSDs
Maintain, enrich, enhance, extend, re-evaluate, combine with other approaches
Utilisation of regional datasets, proto-gsds
Transparency of source of all dataelements
Clear separation of name and concept
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© Christina Flann, 2014
Next Generation Name Resolution
How can we unite the biodiversityinformatics landscape to delivernames and taxonomic concepts sothat users and stakeholders cananswer biodiversity questions?
© Christina Flann, 2014
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Next Generation Name Resolution
Nomenclators and associated registrationsystems
Biodiversity Heritage Library and nextgeneration publications
Catalogue of Life, IT IS, regional datasets
Global Names (Architecture), GN*
Global Biodiversity Information Facility,GBIF
© Christina Flann, 2014
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Role of Nomenclators
Re-use of name ids (RDA WG)
Orthographic corrections, authorship, date,place of publication
Linked name clouds of objective synonyms
Registration of new names, feedback loop toCoL and GSDs for assessment beforeinclusion in taxonomic classification
References linked via BHL, Plazi, Pensoft
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CoL Vision
CoL – meta authority, thesaurus function
Frank: Global Taxonomic Architecture
Including links to specimens & data assessed by taxonomists
GSDs representing taxonomic expert network,provide concepts
Comprehensive, definitive synonymised list
Moving towards open data
Attribution/Provenance (RDA WG)
Feedback, reviewing and annotation processes
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Access
Names are power – the keys to access data
Need to ensure a seamless system for usersto access all knowledge about names
Downloads in standard formats: DwC-A
Improve searches and matching
Many cool tools available
GBIF offers a logical place to eventuallybring all our initiatives together and exposethem to the users
© Christina Flann, 2014
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Services
National Checklists (GBIF and CoL) addressneeds of stakeholders and users
Offer a compelling reason why we needcomprehensive synonymised lists
If CoL is complete supplemented with GBIFdistribution it includes National Checklists
GN* role for missing synonymy?
Look for funding: H2020 ELODINS, LinkD
Consolidate ideas on paper, formalisedcollaboration (RDA Names WG)
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Lots of work to do together
“The next challenge is unifying CoL, GN* andGBIF into a meaningful, authoritative index”Peter Schalk, Executive Secretary, Species2000
“Aim for one meta-authority to work from andrecognise that it will contain manycompromises and errors, aim to makeupdates and changes easy” Donald Hobern,Executive Secretary, GBIF
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Contribution from Donald Hobern
GBIF (unable to attend)
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Reorganisation of what we have
Use of existing GSDs as core for species catalogue, linkagesto name data in IPNI, IF, ZooBank, etc.
Automated interim placement for all other names andpotential species already in our existing data (from GBIF,EOL, any other collaborating catalogues, etc.)
Clear marking of which parts are reviewed by experts andwhich automated
Single point of access for querying these resources andgetting consistent answers
Services to add interim placeholders for other names andpotential species not already included
© Donald Hobern, 2014
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Community Annotation Processes
Development of community annotation processeson top of the combined services
All annotations considered interim proposals untilreviewed & validated by GSDs or nomenclators
Development of shared tools and processesallowing all partners to review, organize andvalidate names and species in a sharedenvironment (moving away from heterogeneousdata management)
Continued ownership of responsibility fortaxonomic data by existing GSDs
© Donald Hobern, 2014
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Evolution of Community Structures
Expanded identity management tools to allow alltaxonomists and other experts to register andparticipate
Opening-up of membership of teams for curatingeach GSD segment
Mechanisms to grant tiered access rights toindividuals for work on different taxa (who cancommit something as no longer interim, etc.)
© Donald Hobern, 2014
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Thank you!
Christina Flann
Strategic Partnerships Officer, Species 2000
c/o Naturalis, Darwinweg 4,
2333 CL Leiden, Netherlands
Email: species2000@sp2000.org
Christina.Flann@sp2000.org
www.catalogueoflife.org
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