The Biofinity Project: Transforming Biodiversity Research

JAMESON. M.L; OCAMPO, F. C.; CLARK, D.; MORE, M. R

Montpelier, Francia

Congreso; Taxonomic Databases Working Group Annual Meeting; 2009

Biodiversity Informatic Standars, TDWG

The Biofinity Project (http://biofinity.unl.edu) is a free web-based repository for biodiversity data and tools designed to support research in the biological sciences. The Biofinity Project federates genomics and biodiversity information and provides support for inclusion of external data regardless of format. The repository allows scientists to access, analyze, share, and publish on biological data from a myriad of available resources. Tools provided by The Biofinity Project, such as mobile iPhone™ data-integration and geo-tagging, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for specimen identification and verification, and web applications for niche modeling, BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool), and phylogenetic analyses will further advance biodiversity research.  The Biofinity Project unifies genomics and biodiversity data, thereby empowering investigation of patterns that can lead to a greater understanding of broad-scale, widely applicable, and emergent biological properties. The Biofinity Project provides full access to enormous, publicly available biodiversity data at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and genomics data at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). In addition, it provides upload and unification of independent databases that are in different formats and based on different software programs. Searching, browsing, and uploading of data to an external database is possible via a web browser or a mobile interface such as the iPhone™ or iPod™ Touch. The in-field application allows instant specimen mapping, geo-tagging, video capture, and direct upload to an external database by using The Biofinity Project’s API (Application Programmer Interface). The Biofinity Project provides web access to bioinformatics tools such as: 1) GoogleMaps-based mapping tool, which allows for study of specimens distribution including climate, topology, and precipitation overlays; 2) ecological niche modeling using DesktopGarp; 3) CLUSTALW for multiple sequence alignment of DNA or proteins; and 4) “My Lab”, a feature that that allows research groups to create an online laboratory database and establish their own user accounts for collaborative research. We showcase our on-going research on scarab beetle biodiversity that uses some of these tools.