Encyclopedia of Life Blog

The countryside in Taiwan, the city of Taichung and Dr. Shao.

From August 11-17th I traveled to Taichung, Taiwan to attend the TaiBNet (Taiwan Biodiversity National Information Network) 2008 Workshop on the status of Taiwan species diversity, organized by Dr. Shao Kwang-Tsao and hosted at the National Museum of Natural Sciences. This conference was held to address the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) mandate to “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.” This conference was an opportunity for Taiwan to evaluate the current situation of its biodiversity and map out some estimated future trends.

At the meeting over 200 researchers and students from all over Taiwan each made presentations on the status of the major organismal groups in Taiwan, including mosses, insects, mammals, worms, molluscs, flowering plants, fungi, and reptiles.  I was one of 6 invited international participants and gave the opening lecture titled “The Encyclopedia of Life; an open access resource for information on all species living on earth”, which was very well received. It was a rare chance to meet  with people from many of the leading Southeast Asian database partners including “Species 2000 China Node” and Fishbase, digital learning and communication are extremely popular in Taiwan, so there was great interest in EOL. I expect at least 3 synthesis meeting proposals to come out of the meeting and possibly many more.

Dr. Chen Tien Hsi measuring a turtle

Also on my trip I was lucky enough to be able to assist Dr. Chen Tien-Hsi for a half day before flying back to the US. Dr. Chen, a conservation biologist in northern Taiwan, and former student of Dr. Shao, traps native turtles in ponds and forests in Taiwan to monitor the size and condition of local populations. He checks his traps every 2-3 days, so it’s a continuous cycle of wading through ponds and hiking through dense jungle. We found three IUCN endangered turtle species while checking the traps in a small protected area near Keelung; Ocadia sinensis, Cuora flavomarginata, and Mauremys mutica. Cuora, the Chinese box turtle, is extremely rare and is interesting because it evolved the ability to seal itself into its shell separately from the more common North American box turtles. Mauremys mutica, the Asian yellow pond turtle, was very active in this area and is known for its ability to hybridize with other turtle species. Ocadia sinesis, the Chinese stripe-necked turtle, is rarely seen in the wild in Taiwan, where it is threatened by habitat destruction. We released one of these after measuring and photographing it, and it kept running back into the turtle trap! He ran back into the trap three times before finally making it back to the pond, here he on try number two:

I would like to say a special thanks to Professor Shao and to his students, particularly Ching, Burke, Seven, Lee-Sea, and Jin Hua.  They were excellent hosts and I would have been lost without their translation skills.

Every quarter the leaders of the five EOL component groups get together to touch base face-to-face. This quarter was the first of these important gatherings to be held at the Biodiversity Synthesis Center. The leaders all caught each other up on the details of what their components have been up to and discussed some exciting goals for the future. This meeting happened to take place from August 20-22nd just around the time Photosynth was released (check out the blog post before this one) and it was discussed much at the meeting, we even tried it out and made our own synth of the meeting!

You can see everyone in attendance (sometimes twice), including: James Edwards and Breen Byrnes (EOL Secretariat), Cyndy Parr (Species Sites Group), Marie Studer (Education and Outreach Group), David Patterson and Peter Mangiafico (Biodiversity Informatics Group), Tom Garret (Scanning and Digitization Group), as well as Chuck Miller (EOL Advisor from Missouri Botanical Gardens) and Mark Westneat, Audrey Aronowsky and Darolyn Striley (Biodiversity Synthesis Group).

Recently, Microsoft Live Labs made their Photosynth publicly available. Some of you may have watched the TED conference talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas in March, 2007:

Microsoft Live Labs very correctly recognizes that this technology has huge potential for the Encyclopedia of Life and have a number of “synth” examples now posted on Photosynth that are tagged EOL. The Photosynth software requires a modest download because it is computationally expensive, but what the technology provides is a seamless way to create hyperlinks between related images, thus creating a basic 3D model. This has immense potential for type specimens in museums throughout the world. Blaise stopped by the Biodiversity Informatics Group building the day before the public launch and gave a stunning preview. Here’s one such example:

On July 25-26, The BioSynC hosted an educational workshop called “I Dig Tanzania!”

The two day event was the culmination of a new learning initiative in which groups of teens in New York City and Chicago teamed up with a group of paleontologists headed up by The Field Museum’s Assistant Curator Ken Angielczyk (Geology) and Collections Manager Bill Simpson (also Geology) to learn about evolution, paleontology, Tanzanian culture, and what field work is like for scientists. While the scientists were conducting their work in southwestern Tanzania in late June, the kids performed a virtual fossil excavation of their own in the virtual world Teen Second Life. The teens were in regular communication with the scientists by satellite phone and also watched videos the team uploaded from the field each day. At the workshop, the teens from Chicago and New York got to meet each other, as well as four members of the scientific team, for the first time in person. They also made presentations about their learning experiences to the public, watched two documentary videos about their work and the scientists’ work in the field, participated in behind the scenes tours of the Geology Department and the Evolving Planet exhibit, discussed fieldwork and careers in science with the team members, and learned about Tanzanian music in a drumming workshop that took place in the Hall of African Mammals. “I Dig Tanzania!” was a collaboration between BioSync, The Field Museum’s Education and Geology departments, and the New York-based Global Kids. Funding for the project was generously provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and The Grainger Foundation.

Here is the link to some pictures posted by Rik Panganiban from Global Kids, click here, as well as the blog that all the kids contributed to during the event.

Finally here is a short documentary video about the scientists expedition, enjoy!