London

A global programme has been launched to collate information on the world's most important collections of animal and plant species, in a format that is freely accessible to all.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which hopes to provide unrestricted access on its website to species information held in existing museum collections, was officially launched in Brussels last week.

The GBIF has received US$2 million of initial support from its twelve member countries. Subscriptions to the GBIF differ from country to country, depending on their wealth.

It is hoped that the facility will enable scientists in developing countries to have access to the best information about their local biodiversity, often for the first time.

“The complexity of this initiative is vast,” says Martin Sharman, a spokesman for the GBIF. About 1.75 million species have been scientifically described in different formats in various collections, but between 10 million and 100 million are thought to exist.

Organizers will decide in July where to place GBIF's secretariat, with Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain all vying to host it.

“GBIF will assist museums, scientists and educators, and give politicians scientifically factual data,” says Carlos Martinez-Riera, a representative of the European Commission and GBIF's chief scientific officer.

Eventually the programme aims to set up a web page for each species, with a standard set of information including characteristics, taxonomy and geographical distribution, Martinez-Riera says.

Several national programmes are currently under way to develop such databases — including Species 2000 in Britain, which is not a full member of the GBIF, but is involved in steering the initiative. At the moment there is a large amount of 'double counting', as scientists have independently discovered and named the same species.

Each member country of the GBIF plans to nominate a scientific institution to head its contribution to the project, which was initiated at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Megascience Forum in 1996.

→ http://www.gbif.org