Achievement proposed | % completion in 5 yrs | ||
1 | Complete species catalogue & visual information (synonymy, subspecies, authors, photos, diagrams, etc.) | 99%
(e.g. many existing lists, including the Lamas, Mielke, Robbins, & Callaghan lists for Neotropical species, about ½ worlds' total; Brian Pitkin and Paul Jenkins (BMNH) hav already produced a provisional synonymic list of genera for all Lepidoptera). |
|
2 | Make all this information available on
WWW
- see database fields below |
100%
(of information gathered) |
|
3 | Fund key revisions for poorly-known groups | need data!!
(90%-95%) |
|
4 | Rejuvenate taxonomy in key world-class European museums | ?? | |
5 | Molecular data for phylogeny
- for 2000 generamitochondrial COI-COII - 2000 bpnuclear EF1-alpha - 1260 bp |
approx. 1000 key genera will be covered
(50% genera),
some at species level (95% of species). e.g. Naomi Pierce's group and Niklas Wahlberg already have approx. 230 taxa (approx. genera) done for COI/COII, wingless, and EF-1-alpha. Significant inroads into Pieridae and Papilionidae also exist (Ward Watt, Felix Sperling, Japanese workers?) |
|
6 | Phylogenetic hypotheses and data | genera 100%
(if lacking molec. data,
species 50% |
|
7 | Life history information and pictures | 50%
e.g. George Beccaloni's database, just published |
|
8 | Distribution data
Basic |
95% |
Fields of proposed web database
Family - author - reference
Subfamily - author - reference
Tribe - author - reference
Subtribe - author - reference
Genus - author - reference
Species - author - reference
Subspecies - author - reference
(Synonyms - author - reference for all
of above)
Pictures
Type specimens if possibleDistribution data
Need new pictures of many of these, for homogeneity - Expensive!
Necessary for Democratization
(ultimately, full data for each specimen recorded??!!, sex, whether a type and so on, linked to picture data if available; many groups are already engaged in such international cross-museum specimen database collaborations)Life histories
Photographs, drawingsGenitalia
Host plants - e.g. Beccaloni at NHM
Photos of preparations?Publications and web links - taxonomy
Figures reproduced from publications where available
List for each speciesMorphological data
Facsimile original descriptions
translations?
Aligned character matrices for phylogeny (collab. with Treebase?)DNA sequences
Genbank references?Phylogeny
Aligned data (collab. with Treebase?)
Collaborate with Tree of Life, recently rejuvenated with Java?Distribution data
See above for aligned data
(ultimately, each specimen recorded??!!)Concerns about data quality and curation
Communications and shared resources --
need multiple copies of websites?
Put sequence information in Genbank (see
above)
Put morphological phylogeny information
in TreeBase (see above)
Vouchers and/or wings/photos for each
DNA/genitalic sample
Use Niklas Wahlberg
leg sampling strategy to preserve body?
Need coherent sampling strategy for DNA work
Choice of taxaDNA curation concerns
Choice of genes (see above)
Avoid redundancy between laboratories
Freezers with backups in major museums?