Zebrasoma flavescens from Bishop Museum,
via Morphbank’s bio image library
Biodiversity, or the presence of numerous plant and animal species in one environment, is the buzzword on everyone’s lips lately. In his best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Possibly in response to all this attention, websites celebrating biodiversity are popping up all over the Internet. Some sites worth visiting include:
The Encyclopedia of Life: A 10 year project launched by the Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library to create a multimedia webpage for each of the 1.8 million named living species on the planet. More >
Biodiversity Heritage Library: An open access “biodiversity commons” consisting of digitized biodiversity resources (including key taxonomic literature) contributed by major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries and research institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History, The Field Museum, Harvard University, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as well as the Smithsonian Institution.
Zoobank: An open access register for new animal names that currently indexes 1,607,969 taxonomic names. Zoobank is linked to Morphbank, a digital image repository for biological images of all kinds.
Global Crop Diversity Trust: A project of the United Nations Foundation and recipient of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $37.5 million donation. The Trust promotes crop diversity as a means of fighting hunger and ensuring food security in developing nations.
Millenium Bank Seed Project: A global seed bank by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, focused on conserving wild seed species across the world.
Kathryn provides market intelligence services to MaRS Advisory Services clients and to The Innovations Group at the University of Toronto. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information.
