A Virtual Catalogue of Invertebrate Life on Earth

In signing the Convention on Biological Diversity, more than 160 countries pledged to produce inventories of their biodiversity - workable catalogues of the variety of life. Some countries have already passed legislation to include this biological information in land-use planning processes. Invertebrate diversity remains largely unknown despite their presence in all habitats and critical role in the maintenance of ecosystem health and ultimately, human well-being. Recent estimates suggest that there may be as many as 30 million species of arthropods alone, yet taxonomists have formally identified less than one million. Consequently, species inventories that document the numbers and identities of invertebrates in space and time are difficult to produce and the catalogue of the Earth's invertebrate biodiversity is very incomplete. New and exciting methodological and technological solutions to this global problem are now emerging, for example: the use of local non-specialist taxonomic workers to increase rates of specimen collection and processing; morphospecies in place of formal species names (Latin binomials) and the most recent of bioinformatic s technologies. The use of bioinformatic s (application of information technology to the solution of biological problems) includes: the addition of unique micro-barcodes to samples and specimens to remove the need for hand written labels and increase the speed of data entry and retrieval; and sophisticated biodiversity database management systems for the capture, storage, manipulation and retrieval of biodiversity data. These data may include taxonomic and ecological information or digital images of species which can be used as virtual voucher specimens in the process of sorting and identification. This paper discusses these recent advances and explores the potential of bioinformatics to provide a digital image database or virtual catalogue of the Earth's invertebrate biodiversity.