Kautz, S. & Moreau, C.S.

Creating Encyclopedia of Life's species pages for ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): What we have done and what remains to be done

In the current era of the internet, sharing information has reached dimensions never before imagined and greatly impacts daily life, education, and science. The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) aims to make knowledge about all the world's living organisms available to anyone at anytime. With over 12,500 described species that constitute 15 - 20% of the animal biomass in most terrestrial areas, ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) are one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet. At a recent meeting held at the Field Museum of Natural History, ant biologists from around the world came together to discuss how the Global Ant Project will contribute to the greater mission of EOL to benefit both the scientific community and the public. Specifically, the ant community will improve and expand freely available online taxonomic resources including a complete taxonomic catalog, specimen images, distribution data and general biological notes, making all this available to EOL via AntWeb. These readily available World Wide Web resources, which rely heavily on basic taxonomic research and training as well as on research collections, facilitate all aspects of ant biology from taxonomy to conservation. In this meeting review, we highlight areas that will be impacted by an informative Encyclopedia of Life, and also address the key challenge of incorporating the many readily existing resources in this enterprise.

Open access, licensed under CC BY 4.0. © 2011 The Author(s).

Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), internet, Global Ant Project (GAP), collaborative taxonomy, meeting review.