Integrated Taxonomic Information System

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Official logo of ITIS

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) is an American partnership of federal agencies designed to provide consistent and reliable information on the taxonomy of biological species. [1] ITIS was originally formed in 1996 as an interagency group within the US federal government, involving several US federal agencies, and has now become an international body, with Canadian and Mexican government agencies participating. The database draws from a large community of taxonomic experts. Primary content staff are housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and IT services are provided by a US Geological Survey facility in Denver. The primary focus of ITIS is North American species, but many biological groups exist worldwide and ITIS collaborates with other agencies to increase its global coverage. [2]

Contents

Reference database

ITIS provides an automated reference database of scientific and common names for species. As of May 2016, it contains over 839,000 scientific names, synonyms, and common names for terrestrial, marine, and freshwater taxa from all biological kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, and microbes). While the system does focus on North American species at minimum, it also includes many species not found in North America, especially among birds, fishes, amphibians, mammals, bacteria, many reptiles, several plant groups, and many invertebrate animal groups. [3] [4] Data presented in ITIS are considered public information, and may be freely distributed and copied, though appropriate citation [5] is requested. ITIS is frequently used as the de facto source of taxonomic data in biodiversity informatics projects. [6]

ITIS couples each scientific name with a stable and unique taxonomic serial number (TSN) as the "common denominator" for accessing information on such issues as invasive species, declining amphibians, migratory birds, fishery stocks, pollinators, agricultural pests, and emerging diseases. It presents the names in a standard classification that contains author, date, distributional, and bibliographic information related to the names. In addition, common names are available through ITIS in the major official languages of the Americas (English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Catalogue of Life

ITIS and its international partner, Species 2000, cooperate to annually produce the Catalogue of Life, a checklist and index of the world's species. The Catalogue of Life's goal was to complete the global checklist of 1.9 million species by 2011. [7] As of May 2012, the Catalogue of Life has reached 1.4 million species—a major milestone in its quest to complete the first up-to-date comprehensive catalogue of all living organisms. [8] [9]

ITIS and the Catalogue of Life are core to the Encyclopedia of Life initiative announced May 2007. [10] EOL will be built largely on various Creative Commons licenses. [11]

Legacy database

Of the ~714,000 (May 2016) scientific names in the current database, approximately 210,000 were inherited from the database formerly maintained by the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). [4] [12] The newer material has been checked to higher standards of taxonomic credibility, and over half of the original material has been checked and improved to the same standard. [4]

Building on efforts by Richard Swartz, Marvin Wass, and Donald Boesch in 1972 to establish an "intelligent" numeric coding system for taxonomy, the first edition of the NODC Taxonomic Code was published in 1977. Hard copy editions were published until 1984. Subsequent editions were published digitally until 1996. 1996 marked the release of NODC version 8, which served as a bridge to ITIS, which abandoned "intelligent" numeric codes in favor of more stable, but "un-intelligent" Taxonomic Serial Numbers. [12]

Standards

Biological taxonomy is not fixed, and opinions about the correct status of taxa at all levels, and their correct placement, are constantly revised as a result of new research. Many aspects of classification remain a matter of scientific judgment. The ITIS database is updated to take account of new research as it becomes available.[ citation needed ]

Records within ITIS include information about how far it has been possible to check and verify them. Its information should be checked against other sources where these are available, and against the primary research scientific literature where possible.

Member agencies

See also

Related Research Articles

In biology, taxonomy is the scientific study of naming, defining (circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, as he developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms and binomial nomenclature for naming organisms.

Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. It is defined as the application of Information technology technologies to management, algorithmic exploration, analysis and interpretation of primary data regarding life, particularly at the species level organization. Modern computer techniques can yield new ways to view and analyze existing information, as well as predict future situations. Biodiversity informatics is a term that was only coined around 1992 but with rapidly increasing data sets has become useful in numerous studies and applications, such as the construction of taxonomic databases or geographic information systems. Biodiversity informatics contrasts with "bioinformatics", which is often used synonymously with the computerized handling of data in the specialized area of molecular biology.

The Catalogue of Life is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The Catalogue is used by research scientists, citizen scientists, educators, and policy makers. The Catalogue is also used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Barcode of Life Data System, Encyclopedia of Life, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Catalogue currently compiles data from 165 peer-reviewed taxonomic databases that are maintained by specialist institutions around the world. As of September 2022, the COL Checklist lists 2,067,951 of the world's 2.2m extant species known to taxonomists on the planet at present time.

<i>Encyclopedia of Life</i> Free, online collaborative encyclopedia that documents species

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It aggregates content to form "page"s for every known species. Content is compiled from existing trusted databases which are curated by experts and it calls on the assistance of non-experts throughout the world. It includes video, sound, images, graphics, information on characteristics, as well as text. In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates species-related content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which digitizes millions of pages of printed literature from the world's major natural history libraries. The BHL digital content is indexed with the names of organisms using taxonomic indexing software developed by the Global Names project. The EOL project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, respectively. The additional US$25 million came from five cornerstone institutions—the Field Museum, Harvard University, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Smithsonian Institution. The project was initially led by Jim Edwards and the development team by David Patterson. Today, participating institutions and individual donors continue to support EOL through financial contributions.

A taxonomic database is a database created to hold information on biological taxa – for example groups of organisms organized by species name or other taxonomic identifier – for efficient data management and information retrieval. Taxonomic databases are routinely used for the automated construction of biological checklists such as floras and faunas, both for print publication and online; to underpin the operation of web-based species information systems; as a part of biological collection management ; as well as providing, in some cases, the taxon management component of broader science or biology information systems. They are also a fundamental contribution to the discipline of biodiversity informatics.

Anadara secernenda, also known as baughman ark or skewed arkis is a saltwater clam in the family Arcidae, which includes the ark shells. This species is found in the Caribbean Sea and off the shores of Brazil. It was discovered in 1851.

Species 2000 is a federation of database organizations around the world that compiles the Catalogue of Life, a comprehensive checklist of the world's species, in partnership with the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). The creation of Species 2000 was initiated by Frank Bisby and colleagues at the University of Reading in the UK in 1997 and the Catalogue of Life was first published in 2001. While administrators and member organizations of Species 2000 are located around the world, the secretariat is located at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands.

Catalog of Fishes is a comprehensive on-line database and reference work on the scientific names of fish species and genera. It is global in its scope and is hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. It has been compiled and is continuously updated by the curator emeritus of the CAS fish collection, William N. Eschmeyer.

<i>Entylia</i> Genus of true bugs

Entylia is a genus of treehoppers in the family Membracidae. There are at least three described species in Entylia.

<i>Neotibicen davisi</i> Species of true bug

Neotibicen davisi, known generally as the Davis' southeastern dog-day cicada or southern dog-day cicada, is a species of cicada in the family Cicadidae.

<i>Neotibicen lyricen</i> Species of true bug

Neotibicen lyricen, the lyric cicada, is a species of cicada in the family Cicadidae.

<i>Neotibicen pruinosus</i> Species of true bug

Neotibicen pruinosus, commonly known as the scissor grinder, is a species of cicada in the family Cicadidae.

<i>Parancistrocerus fulvipes</i> Species of wasp

Parancistrocerus fulvipes also known by the common name potter wasp is a species of stinging wasp in the family Vespidae. This species' nesting sites include borings in wood, old mud dauber and Polistes nests, and abandoned burrows of ground-nesting bees, but it may also construct its own burrows in the ground. Prey includes caterpillars of Tortricidae, Nolidae, Chloephorinae, Crambidae, and Gelechiidae.

<i>Polyglypta</i> Genus of treehoppers

Polyglypta is a genus of treehoppers in the family Membracidae. There are at least three described species in Polyglypta.

<i>Thelia</i> Genus of true bugs

Thelia is a genus of treehoppers in the family Membracidae. There are at least two described species in Thelia.

<i>Begonia cucullata</i> Species of flowering plant "wax begonia"

Begonia cucullata, also known as clubbed begonia, is a species of the Begoniaceae that is native to South American countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. A common garden plant and part of the section Begonia, it was described in 1805 by Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812). The specific epithet "cucullata" means "resembling a hood" or "hooded".

Atelothrus debilis is a species of beetle first discovered in 1917. No sub-species are listed in the Catalogue of Life.

Pterostichus obesulus is a species of beetle first discovered in 1873. No sub-species are listed in the Catalogue of Life.

References

  1. ↑ "ITIS Memorandum of Understanding". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 2008-04-04.
  2. ↑ Coote, Lonny D; et al. (February 2008). "Monitoring International Wildlife Trade with Coded Species Data". Conservation Biology. 22 (1): 4–7. Bibcode:2008ConBi..22....4.. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00857.x. PMID   18254847. S2CID   2782054.
  3. ↑ "Integrated Taxonomic Information System". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Archived from the original on 2016-06-06. Retrieved 2016-05-30.
  4. 1 2 3 "Data Development History and Data Quality". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 2016-05-30.
  5. ↑ "ITIS Citation" . Retrieved 2012-05-09.
  6. ↑ Page, D. M. R. (2005-04-09). "A Taxonomic Search Engine: Federating taxonomic databases using web services". BMC Bioinformatics. 6: 48. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-6-48 . PMC   555944 . PMID   15757517.
  7. ↑ Guralnick, R. P.; et al. (September 2007). "Towards a collaborative, global infrastructure for biodiversity assessment". Ecology Letters. 10 (8): 663–672. Bibcode:2007EcolL..10..663G. doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01063.x. PMC   2040220 . PMID   17594421.
  8. ↑ "One Million Species Catalogue of Life launch" (Press release). University of Reading. 2007-03-29. Archived from the original on May 30, 2012. Retrieved 2008-03-16.
  9. ↑ "About the Catalog of Life: 2012 Annual Checklist". Catalog of Life. Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). Retrieved 22 May 2012.
  10. ↑ "Leading Scientists Announce Creation Of Encyclopedia Of Life". Science Daily. May 9, 2007. Adapted from a Harvard University news release.
  11. ↑ "Terms of Use - Encyclopedia of Life". Encyclopedia of Life.
  12. 1 2 "NODC Taxonomic Code". National Oceanographic Data Center. Retrieved 2008-04-04.
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