The All Birds Barcoding Initiative (ABBI) website barcodingbirds.org provides a continuously updated progress report on barcoding world birds. A live feed matches barcodes deposited in the
Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) to a checklist of world birds. barcodingbirds.org visitors can view world and regional progress reports, progress by orders and families, and detailed results for individual species including zoomable Google world maps showing where barcodes were collected. A link out to species pages in Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) is provided.
A sibling website fishbol.org provides live updates for the Fish Barcode of Life initiative (FishBOL) which aims to collect barcodes from all fishes, approximately 30,000 species.
In addition to assisting researchers scattered across the globe track progress and coordinate efforts, these sites will interest many other persons. They link an enormous amount of taxonomic information with growing genetic databases derived from museum collections. The instant Google maps provide a early glimpse of what these sites can do. Future tools will overlay genetic differences in mitochondrial DNA barcodes on top of the geographic map. These “mashups” of traditional taxonomy, widely-accessible species identification through genetic barcode analysis, and user-friendly visualization will have many viewers.