Assimilating data relating to the World's biodiversity hinges upon a seamless data environment uniting both local and distributed information. Numerous biological databases contain data relevant to the study of biodiversity, but most of these databases are not interoperational, and few are designed to seek out related data in other publicly available databases. Furthermore, none of these biodiversity databases link to locally stored user data. The primary goal of the BioCorder project is to develop an information technology framework and infrastructure that facilitates the discovery, access, integration, and analysis of distributed phylogenetic and biodiversity data. BioCorder will also link these distributed data resources to locally stored specimen-based data, which will allow biodiversity researchers to manage data in a structured workflow environment and answer complex research questions that were once intractable.

This project builds upon NSF-funded research that has produced 1) standards for the capture, storage, and dissemination of biological collections data (e.g. MOBY) and 2) stand-alone specimen databases (e.g. Specify, Biota2, etc.) and 3) distributed specimen databases (e.g. MaNIS, Herpnet, FishNet, ORNIS, and mapstedi). Our project will use the relevant data standards to produce a local specimen database that will track specimen- based information from inception (i.e. project design), to data acquisition, analysis, and beyond. There are two key differences between our BioCorder project and its predecessors. First, our database is designed for the individual specimen-based researcher, not for entire museum collections. The second difference is that BioCorder links the user's locally stored data to distributed data such as other installations of BioCorder, formal taxonomies, checklists, molecular data, phylogenetic trees, GIS data, bibliographic data, etc. to create a biodiversity information grid.

For the specimen-based researcher, the accumulation of data, especially molecular data, is occurring so rapidly that we are challenged to maintain good records and keep up with our own progress. BioCorder will allow the user to track specimens even before they are collected via a project manager that includes target lists for collecting purposes. As specimens are acquired, they are easily tracked through the database as tasks are performed such as producing DNA extracts, PCR products, DNA sequences, etc. The local and distributed information in BioCorder can be queried from a common user interface that contains both simple search capabilities (Google-like searches) as well as complex, multilayered searches.

The development phase of this project will be restricted to a small network of laboratories in the USA and UK that have longstanding collaborative agreements in the sharing of specimen-based data. This work will have an enormous impact on the degree with which these labs can share data, coordinate data sets, perform analyses, and collectively test hypotheses. BioCorder will build upon prototypes of web-based databases that have already been developed by the PIs. Installations of the BioCorder database will form the backbone of a biodiversity information grid that will be accessible via a central data portal. This will act as a gateway to collections, data, products and resources served by the BioCorder network and third party data providers.

The BioCorder concept was defined in a grant application co-written by David Reed (University of Florida) and Vince Smith (INHS, Univ. of Illinois), and awarded a little over half a million dollars in March 2005 by the National Science Foundation. This project is a collaboration between its authors, who are joined by Mark Hafner at Louisiana State University, and Rod Page at the University of Glasgow. The BioCorder project proposal is available in the attached document.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0445712. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.