ZooBank and the Taxonomic Renaissance

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ZooBank and theTaxonomic Renaissance

• Quentin Wheeler
• Keeper and Head of Entomology
• The Natural History Museum, London

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Services Problem-solving
Basic Taxonomy
Applied Taxonomy
Curiosity-driven
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Taxonomys Grand Challenge Questions
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Grand Challenge Questions

• What species exist?
• Phylogeny?
• Character ? history?
• Distribution in geographic, ecological space?
• ? distribution?
• Informative, predictive classification/names?

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Need for reliable taxonomy information is urgent

• environmental sciences
• biodiversity conservation
• management natural products
• inform public policy
• evolutionary (historical) framework for biology

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What are constraints?

• Access
• Existing species, names literature
• Specimens specimen data
• Instrumentation
• Colleagues
• Timely, complete, reliable information

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E-monographymodernizeimprove
efficiencyenable collaborative research
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user defined
e-monography
monographs
Curated Collections
field guides
Cyber facilitated Taxonomic Expert Network
checklists
maps
Curated Virtual Monograph (Taxonomic Knowledge
Base)
morphological images and analyses
ID tools
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TAXONOMY CKC Cyberinfrastructure-enabled
Knowledge Community
Observation, measurement fabrication services
High performance computing services
Data, info, knowledge management services
Interfaces, visualization services
Collaborative services
Networking, Operating system, Middleware
Base technology computation, storage,
communication
cyberinfrastructure (CI)
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Virtual Species Observatory ( Scollections)
See Across all Scales Geography Ecosystems
Time
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ACCESS CONSTRAINTS
SOLUTIONS
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CI (cyber-infrastructure) will transform how we
do, think about and use taxonomic information
knowledge