Linking biodiversity information sources.

It is a commonplace to state that we know very little about life on Earth. However, the amount of information that already exists about the biodiversity of the planet is staggering. Terabytes of remotely sensed data are available, with more accumulating daily. Automated gene sequencing is creating huge libraries of genetic information. At both national and global levels, electronic databases are available that summarize aspects of phytochemistry, plant–pest relations, taxonomy, conservation biology, biological literature, and so on. Last, but not least, vast holdings of the world’s natural history museums are slowly but surely being captured in electronic formats – these holdings total on the order of 3 × 109 specimens from all over the world, of which perhaps 5–10% are already captured. All of the above are part of biodiversity data, which are scattered, heterogeneous and lack integration. Hence, we have biodiversity data, but we do not have a true biodiversity information system.The museum specimen data are especially significant because they provide the scaffolding on which to assemble the structure of biodiversity information. Specimens are physical objects, each in principle having both a ‘taxo-reference’ and a ‘geo-reference’. The taxo-reference provides a link to the world of data, reachable through scientific taxonomic information (scientific literature, endangered species legislation, conservation data centers, markets, etc.). The geo-reference provides links to geographically structured data (GIS, remotely sensed data, etc.) and permits researchers to study specimens over spatial scales. Besides the intrinsic scientific interest, experiences in the Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN) in Australia, the Comision Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO) of Mexico, the Heritage Data Centers of the Nature Conservancy (USA), the GAP Analysis Program of the US Department of the Interior, and many others, amply demonstrate how museum specimen data allow integration with other information in ways useful to a large variety of users. The critical step in achieving this integration is thus that of accessing museum specimen data in usable form.The three NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) countries share a wealth of species and ecosystems, and hundreds of migratory and invasive species move back and forth across their borders. Therefore, at the request of the North American governments in 1996, the Commission on Environmental Cooperation began funding a project to explore the feasibility of using the Internet to link biodiversity information sources across the region. Essentially, the core challenge would be tackling the problem of compat-ibility of heterogeneous, distributed databases. A group of scientists at the University of Kansas and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma of Mexico with colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputer Center started developing a prototype. This prototype network is the central project of the North America Biodiversity Information Network (NABIN).Using ANSI/NISO Z39.50, a standard for information interchange and retrieval that has proven successful in the bibliographic and geospatial domains, researchers can now search and retrieve biodiversity information from multiple databases at institutions across the world connected by the Internet. Z39.50 clients are typically designed to provide information-browsing capabilities, which can be compared to web-browsers, interfacing to structured data rather than to randomly formatted HTML pages; the advantage of Z39.50 over formatted HTML is that the data provided are consistent in format, and the presentation of the data is left to the client application.A major problem in working with biodiversity data is that single databases rarely contain sufficient information for detailed analysis of a species or region. The NABIN data network, by allowing search and retrieval from multiple sources, minimizes this problem as more institutions provide Z39.50 access to their databases. Users query multiple collection databases simultaneously and, in a matter of seconds, obtain the extracted information directly into a client application in a form suitable for further analysis.Software linking the museum data to geographic themes and allowing prediction of species distributions is under development at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and is also integrated into the NABIN network. These new tools have already stimulated novel research applications at the University of Kansas, ERIN in Australia, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, CONABIO in Mexico City, and other institutions. The suite of capabilities provided by the NABIN data network thus provides an infrastructure that allows seamless search, retrieval and subsequent analysis of a wealth of biodiversity data that would have hitherto been impossible or difficult to access.The prototype network developed by the NABIN researchers has already proven the feasibility of linking data held in a variety of formats and institutions. Hence, a researcher in Mexico City might submit a query about the known localities of a given species. The query would be subsequently answered by five or six institutions in Mexico and the USA. The occurrence data extracted can then be modeled using the analytical software at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, displayed in maps, and downloaded directly in GIS format.Given the open structure of the network and the ‘free and open access to data and technology’ philosophy of the project, data linked by the NABIN network could be organized, analysed or visualized according to the needs of any number of other systems or applications. The sheer amount of information that can already be reached suggests that global-scale integration of biodiversity information, towards which the NABIN network is a step, will simply change the way biology is done today.The network will soon be made publicly available over the Internet (project webpage: http://chipotle.nhm.ukans.edu/NABIN). The NABIN group had to solve technical problems ranging from Z39.50 interoperability to multiple taxonomic authority files, lack of georeferencing, and development of cutting-edge techniques for modeling distributions. Many challenges still remain, such as development of quality-control tools required to assess suitability of distributed data for a particular question; creation of visualization software capable of dealing with large and complex datasets, and development of the theoretical, statistical and analytical tools for the same. The most important challenge was and is, however, to ensure wholehearted participation by the biodiversity community, each institution providing free and open access to data under its control. NABIN chose a model in which data remain under the control of owner institutions and researchers, solving many problems of data centralization, update and ownership. This model will succeed if, and only if, a significant portion of the biodiversity community participates. Already, six major institutions are participating in the prototype; the NABIN group, however, plans to extend the network to link hundreds of institutions. Here lies the real challenge ahead.