A curation interface for reconciliation of species names for India. Thomas Vattakaven and R. Prabhakar, India Biodiversity Portal, Strand Life Sciences, Bangalore, India

Aims to aggregate information on the biodiversity of India and make it openly accessible to all. All data is put out under Creative Commons Licences.

Information modules Species pages – descriptive content on species (Crowd sourced from verified users) Observations – species sighting records with media- (Crowd sourced – Citizen science) Lists – species records from a locality (Crowd sourced – Citizen science) Maps – map layers containing ecological information. Documents – publications on a species. (Crowd sourced)

India species name lists There is no definitive name list for all the species in India There is scattered information for Indian species across different global and regional databases. None are comprehensive. Both ZSI and BSI do not provide a complete name list There is a need for a comprehensive name resolution service to resolve all Indian names to create a species name list for India’s biodiversity.

Compilation of original species list for IBP Database species name-list

Species Pages Observations Species listsMap layers Documents names Database species name-list

Name resolution Accepted Name Synonym Common name Misspelt name Resolve all available scientific names against a single reference taxonomy

What properties of a name do we need? Accepted nameSynonymCommon name Rank Name Status AuthorString Classification Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species Accepted name Synonym, References Language Transliteration

How do we do it? The names need to be reorganized based on some sort of consensus taxonomy. 100,000 names (scientific and common) spread across different taxa and little or no taxonomic resources. A massive one-time exercise will not do, new names will continually feed in to the portal. Can we feed off an existing service that already handles these issues and adapt it to our needs?

The Catalogue of Life is the most comprehensive and authoritative global index of species currently available. It consists of a single integrated species checklist and taxonomic hierarchy. From many databases - (142 databases with information on 1,583,924 species, 146,175 infra specific taxa and also includes 1,285,745 synonyms and 390,258 common names) many databases CoL contains substantial contributions of taxonomic expertise from more than fifty organizations around the world, integrated into a single work by the ongoing work of the CoLP partners. It has a dynamic list (constantly evolving) and an annual list that is published and archived and can be referenced.

However, CoL does not have all Indian species. In the Indian context, classification systems for certain groups may be more recent/relevant and we need flexibility to choose such a classification system. eg: butterflies of India. CoL provides a dynamically updating taxonomic list that covers all taxa and resolves all names along a consensus taxonomy It is accepted and used by other major global initiatives

Mammals Arthropods Fishes Plants Amphibians Birds Coleoptera Butterflies IBP additions not matched on CoL but curated by curators Aves CoL Catalogue CoL-IBP Hybrid Catalogue Additions and Substitutions

Clean list CoL Ubio GBIF TNRS EoL Name No match Match Curation interface User input 1 O Reference2 O Reference3 O Reference Non-editableEditable Working list Curators (group specific) Any User AutomatedManual Namelist for India which is also the taxonomic backbone of the portal Master Curator (group specific) Dirty List Dirty List

Demo version of the name curation interface

Acknowledgments Portal Team Support

Contributors