Biodiversity and the Internet: Building and Using the Virtual World Museum

Abstract

Biodiversity information has been collected by natural history museums for almost 300 years and is estimated to exceed three billion records. Electronic capture of data and the use of distributed information technology allow scientists to access this information on a global scale. We trace the development of this technology in one community from paper to the Internet and show how biologists are using biodiversity information to address fundamental questions ranging from predicting species distribution to predicting the effects of global climate change.