The Encyclopedia of Life: A The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web Site for Every SpeciesWeb Site for Every Species

James EdwardsJames EdwardsExecutive Director, EOLExecutive Director, EOL

Barcode of Life ConferenceBarcode of Life ConferenceTaipeiTaipei20 September 200720 September 2007

The missing link in CBOL

• CBOL making excellent progress on:– Promoting barcodes– BOLD– Developing linkages with other projects– Adding barcode content– BARCODE standard– etc.

• One important component missing– Database of species information

Enter the Encyclopedia of Life

What is the EOL?

• 21st century on-line encyclopedia about Earth’s biological species

• With information about all currently accepted species

• And the millions more still to be described • All presented in a common format• But user configurable• All freely available over the Internet• And accessible from a common portal• But with capability for users to develop their own

entry-points

Encyclopedia of Life

• Core: a separate web site for each of Earth’s known species– Estimated to be 1.8 million validly known species

• Each site contains:– Introductory page for general public

• Vetted by experts• Source of the information indicated (“attribution”)• With links to the scientific literature

– Additional pages and entry points for diverse user groups

• Molecular & evolutionary biologists• Taxonomists• Horticulturists, bird watchers• Biodiversity-based industries (fisheries)• School children, teachers, citizen scientists

Status of EOL

• Idea for EOL came from many people– Dan Janzen, Chris Thompson, ALL Species, E.O. Wilson …

• Until recently, IT technology was a limiting factor

• Current version of EOL launched May 2007

• 10-year cost ~ $70 m?

• $25 million committed by MacArthur and Sloan Foundations

• Cornerstone institutions pledged to raise additional $25 million

• Portal v1.0 to open in February 2008

Partners

• All EOL’s activities are carried out in partnership with

– Organizations

– Institutions

– Individuals

Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)

• Work with existing organizations to port information into EOL (“low-hanging fruit”)– FishBase--species page

Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)

– Tree of Life Web--supraspecific pages

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Plan to develop species pages--phase 1 (pilot)

– Catalogue of Life--default taxonomy

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Plan to develop species pages--phase 1

• Milestone:

– EOL portal, version 1, released in February 2008

• More than 30,000 species pages

• Possibly other pages (amphibians)

• Many thousand additional pages (e.g. supraspecific pages)

Plan to develop species pages--phase 2

• Work with taxonomic communities to prepare species pages in their areas

– Oct. 2007--international meeting on plant species pages at Missouri Botanical Garden

• Aggregation (“mashup”) technology to pull information together for draft species pages

• Wiki technologies for page curators to authenticate data

– Curators will be identified as the authors of the pages

• Prepare versions of EOL that will work on all platforms, from desktops to handhelds

Plan to develop species pages--phase 2

• Expected partners:

– Global Biodiversity Information Facility--specimen and observational data--maps

– BOLD

– Sequence databases

– National/international projects• Atlas of Living Australia• IUCN• Zoobank

– Taxonomic communities

Plan to develop species pages--phase 2

• Milestone:

– Within five years, have

• 1 million species pages

– Of varying levels of completeness

Other components of EOL

• Biodiversity Heritage Library

– Consortium of ten of the world’s largest natural history libraries

– Plan to digitize world’s scientific biodiversity literature

• Estimate 320,000,000 printed pages

• Have digitized and marked up > 2 million pages

– Taxonomic intelligence applied to all pages

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Other components of EOL

• Biodiversity Synthesis

– Look across the species sites and identify novel uses

• “Macroscope”

– Biodiversity Synthesis Center

– Collaborations with user groups

• E.g., pollinators, ageing

• Education and Outreach

– Schools at all levels

– Citizen scientists (amateur naturalists, birdwatchers, horticulturists, etc.

etc.)

• Tools to allow people to feed information back into the EOL

A personal aside stimulated

by Benoit Dayrat

• Fully agree with:

– Need for an integrative approach to alpha taxonomy, coupled with

monographic analyses

– Insistence on having barcodes for all new types

– Importance of taxonomists moving from cottage-industry to

collaborative, on-line approach

• EOL, combined with resources being developed by EDIT and

CATE, can be a valuable tool in these changes

– Obviate each taxonomist spending time finding all the names again

– Will also empower scientists in developing countries by providing on-line

access to information and literature

In conclusion

• Encyclopedia of Life will be an excellent resource for:

– Aiding taxonomic research

– Providing species-level information to everyone

– Weaving together the many excellent biodiversity initiatives and

programs

– Serving DNA barcode data

– Supporting decision makers

• It can serve as the species database for barcorders

Join us on this grand adventure

www.eol.org