SpeciesBase:
Free Access to All Knowledge about Life on Earth

The Vision

Millions of species form our living environment and provide us with oxygen, food, recycling, medicine, and other services on which our survival on planet earth depends. Given this importance, surely we should be able to answer simple questions such as: “How many species live in my country? Where exactly are they? Which of these are the most important ones for our ecosystems? Which species can invade our ecosystems, and which of these are the most dangerous ones?” Currently, such questions can not be answered. And this is not because the information does not exist. Much is actually known and new information is generated at a staggering rate. However, we can not access this information in a comprehensive manner that would allow answering above questions. Here we propose that the time is ripe to change this sad state of affairs. We describe how existing building blocks can be put together to create a global information system providing free access to all knowledge about life on earth.

The Scope

Improving and using our understanding of life on earth are major challenges of the 21st century. A precondition to the understanding of life is free and easy access to all existing knowledge and expertise about all species. What is needed is an authoritative, public, international and global information system on all species on earth, where key information is structured such that it can be used for scientific analysis as well as for informing the public. Also, the page that presents key information on a given species shall provide easy access to all other information available on this species: where and when specimens have been encountered; where specimens can be obtained; how species can be identified; all scientific publications on this species; treaties, conventions and laws involving this species; time series data about its usage by humans; its current status of threat; its social and economic importance; its role in the ecosystem; genetic data; its appearance in culture and arts; and its treatment in other information systems.

The Model

We propose building such information system modeled after FishBase, currently the most successful species information system with over 1 million visitors per month and over 1000 citations in the scientific literature.

Our approach can be summarized as follows:

1.  Use scientific and common names from the Annual Checklist of the Catalogue of Life
     Programme;
2.  Show key-information (distribution, size, diagnostic characters, tropic level, biology)
      from existing species databases such as FishBase, AlgaeBase, or LepsBase;
3.  Provide standardize distribution maps built on occurrence information provided by  GBIF
     and OBIS;
4.  Integrate additional information from thematic databases such as GenBank, IUCN Red
      List, Barcode of Life, or ECOLEX;
5.  Provide deep-links into other information systems containing information on species;
6.  Make best use of relevant information available in the WorldWideWeb;
7.  Provide tools that make intelligent use of the standardized information in SpeciesBase, e.g., for
     research and management;
8.  Provide options for users to add information;
9.  Create an infrastructure that facilitates all of the above;
10.Build a network of partners involved in above information systems and assist them in completing
    and maintaining  their respective databases.

SpeciesBase will be able to answer the following questions:

• What species live on earth?
• How do you distinguish them?
• Where do they live?
• What are their key traits (size, trophic level, productivity/resilience, value)?
• How many of them are there (abundance)?
• How do they interact?
• What are their actual and potential uses?
• How do they respond to change?

The following economic issues can be addressed with SpeciesBase:

• Suitability of species for sustainable use.
• Economic value of species, including auxiliary functions such as pollination,
  symbiosis, biological control, natural genepool of crops and livestock, etc.
• Facilitation of economic activities that depend on species information
  (Ecotourism, Environmental Impact Assessments, resource discovery, etc).
• Identification, prediction and prevention of invasives, pests and pathogens.
• Human health impact of species.

The following mobile services will become available through SpeciesBase:

• Show me the species that are most likely around me here and now.
• Guide me to one of my favourite species in this area.
• What is this species (Quick identification)?
• I want to report this species (Upload of photo, time, date, 
  coordinates, species name, remarks)
• I want to know more about this species.

The following ‘Proofs of Concept’ are currently available online:

• www.speciesbase.mobi contains key information for 60,000 aquatic species and rudimentary 
  information for additional 1 million species.
• www.aquamaps.org has range maps for over 7,000 marine species, just click anywhere in the 
  Ocean to see what lives there. Maps for terrestrial species are under development.
• www.fishbase.org is the role model for SpeciesBase, with detailed information on all 30,000 
  fishes of the world.
• www.catalogueoflife.org has sorted out valid scientific names, synonyms and common names 
  for over one million species of about 1.8 million species known to science. 
• www.gbif.org holds over 100 million occurrence records for several hundred thousand species.

For more information, contact the SpeciesBase coordinator Rainer Froese.