Visualisation to aid biodiversity studies through accurate taxonomic reconciliation

Abstract

All aspects of organismal biology rely on the accurate identification of specimens described and observed. This is particularly important for ecological surveys of biodiversity, where organisms must be identified and labelled, both for the purposes of the original research, but also to allow reinterpretation or reuse of collected data by subsequent research projects. Yet it is now clear that biological names in isolation are unsuitable as unique identifiers for organisms. Much modern research in ecology is based on the integration (and re-use) of multiple datasets which are inherently complex, reflecting any of the many spatial and temporal environmental factors and organismal interactions that contribute to a given ecosystem. We describe visualization tools that aid in the process of building concept relations between related classifications and then in understanding the effects of using these relations to match across sets of classifications. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.