Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

The Barcode Blog

A mostly scientific blog about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery. I encourage your commentary. -- Mark Stoeckle

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Encylopedia of Life opens, another step toward global commons of biodiversity knowledge

On February 27, 2008, Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), “a web page for every species” officially launched, with over 30,000 species pages, mostly fish so far, and a diversity of links to internet resources including Biodiversity Heritage Library (2.9 million pages digitized). In case you missed it, there is a thrilling, award-winning video.  Following Wikipedia model, EOL users are invited to become “curators” for one or more species pages, and later this year all are invited to submit content (photos, drawing, text, video, for example) for review. For an entertaining brief history of Wikipedia and why it keeps getting better see Nicholson Baker’s review of John Broughton’s Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in March 20, 2008 New York Review of Books.

Most near-sun comets are now discovered by amateurs, using images downloaded from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a satellite launched December 2, 1995 as part of international collaboration between European Space Agency (ESA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). I expect that EOL and other open-access databases will lead to many more persons contributing to biodiversity science.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Encylopedia of Life opens, another step toward global commons of biodiversity knowledge”

  1. Hypotheek Berekenen Says:
    May 12th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    I worked with the EOL before but never saw that movie before. Great movie indeed with some Dutch images from a fellow photographer Frans Lanting. Good work 🙂

  2. NeuRobotics Says:
    May 23rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Great movie. i neve saw t before.

  3. Norhafidz Says:
    September 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    Wow, watched the movie and I’m speechless, they put in together a lot of species! That must hard work. Good job, keep them alive! 🙂

Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu

About this site

This web site is an outgrowth of the Taxonomy, DNA, and Barcode of Life meeting held at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, September 9-12, 2003. It is designed and managed by Mark Stoeckle, Perrin Meyer, and Jason Yung at the Program for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.

About the Program for the Human Environment

The involvement of the Program for the Human Environment in DNA barcoding dates to Jesse Ausubel's attendance in February 2002 at a conference in Nova Scotia organized by the Canadian Center for Marine Biodiversity. At the conference, Paul Hebert presented for the first time his concept of large-scale DNA barcoding for species identification. Impressed by the potential for this technology to address difficult challenges in the Census of Marine Life, Jesse agreed with Paul on encouraging a conference to explore the contribution taxonomy and DNA could make to the Census as well as other large-scale terrestrial efforts. In his capacity as a Program Director of the Sloan Foundation, Jesse turned to the Banbury Conference Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose leader Jan Witkowski prepared a strong proposal to explore both the scientific reliability of barcoding and the processes that might bring it to broad application. Concurrently, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle began to work with the Hebert lab on analytic studies of barcoding in birds. Our involvement in barcoding now takes 3 forms: assisting the organizational development of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and the Barcode of Life Initiative; contributing to the scientific development of the field, especially by studies in birds, and contributing to public understanding of the science and technology of barcoding and its applications through improved visualization techniques and preparation of brochures and other broadly accessible means, including this website. While the Sloan Foundation continues to support CBOL through a grant to the Smithsonian Institution, it does not provide financial support for barcoding research itself or support to the PHE for its research in this field.