Catalogue of Life a Virtual Research Community to

Catalogue of Life a Virtual Research Community to exchange data for enumerating the extent of life on earth Authors: Peter Schalk, Wouter Addink, Yuri Roskov

Authoritative index of valid names Until 1996 no single authoritative index of valid names, synonyms, common names was available. Then the taxonomic community created the Catalogue of Life. Medical information: E. g. medicinal plants Taxonomic dbs Hierarchies, names Biological collections: (type) specimen Historical data Type strains observations Ecological relations: Co. L NAME INDEX E. g. Food web structures Host-parasite relations Chemical substances: Source species Literature Identification data: Reference systems Legislation: Image libraries: E-publications Species protection Images, videos, sounds Import/export Identification keys Identification characters www. catalogueoflife. org

What is the Catalogue of Life? • an electronic synonymic species checklist • a tightly integrated taxonomic hierarchy • intended for all 1. 9 M extant known species (and soon: fossils) • both checklist and hierarchy are constructed from sectors from many networked databases around the world • Data is integrated using an international panel of experts www. catalogueoflife. org

f o e u og l a t a s n W o h w o C e th f i L ? e

Species 2000, ITIS, and the Catalogue of Life Species 2000 is a "federation" of database organisations working closely with users, taxonomists and sponsoring agencies and established in 1996. Goal is to create a taxonomic community-driven validated checklist of all the 1, 9 M world's species (plants, animals, fungi and microbes) by bringing together an array of global species databases covering each of the major groups of organisms: The Catalogue of Life. In June 2001 a partnership was established with the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS) of North America. The Catalogue of Life is based on a distributed model and used by a growing number of global, regional and national projects as taxonomic backbone service. Stats: 40 M hits / year; 40, 000 unique users / month; yearly 3, 500 DVDs to 79 countries www. catalogueoflife. org

i 4 Life Virtual Community In i 4 Life the Co. L provides an index to the large biodiversity projects and generates feedback data (names) to the underlying databases. www. catalogueoflife. org

Tools and Services for the Community The Catalogue of Life provides a range of tools and services to interact with the user community: • A cross-mapping tool supports fast comparisons of biodiversity databases against the Co. L and reports on similarities and differences. • A Piping Tool funnels unlisted names back to the GSDs for processing and updating. • An extensive cross-mapping exercise with the major biodiversity information resources (GBIF, Eo. L, IUCN, CBOL, EBI-EMBL) promotes data harmonization in the community and improves interoperability. www. catalogueoflife. org

ICT Infrastructure • Hosting in the Cloud at Naturalis for the core systems (Assembly Workbench) and development • Distributed hosting of other services (example: hosting the Cross-mapping service at Cardiff University) • SLA for all hosted services • Improved automation in assembly • Focus on providing the Co. L integrated in applications (more web-services and by serving the Co. L as linked open data) https: //github. com/naturalis

Stability and Sustainability Species 2000 has assured long term stability and sustainability for the Co. L through a hosting agreement with Naturalis Biodiversity Center in The Netherlands, flanked by a long-term sponsoring contract in the US. The various task and responsibilities for the Co. L are realized through a distributed secretariat embedded in the global taxonomic community. www. catalogueoflife. org

More information For more information on the Catalogue of Life and Species 2000 please visit the website: www. catalogueoflife. org or www. species 2000. org Individual academic use of the Co. L online services are free of charge. If you prefer to receive the Annual Checklist on (free) DVD-ROM please email the Species 2000 Secretariat: sp 2000@sp 2000. org For joining the Co. L Team or queries on submitting databases feel free to contact: sp 2000@sp 2000. org Questions about the governance or joining Species 2000 as a member: peter. schalk@naturalis. nl (Chairman Board of Directors) Thank you for your attention! www. catalogueoflife. org