Abstract ID: 700

The “Automatic Ornithologist”: A New Website for Predicting Amazonian Bird Species Composition by Locality

The world’s most species-rich biome, the Amazon, is not as poorly known as it may seem. Distributions of the great majority of Amazonian bird species are reasonably well known, and, more importantly, a set of basic rules for predicting species distributions can be formulated. However, the enormity of the area and the diversity of its fauna, combined with the shortage of experts, make it virtually impossible to publish synthetic works that are not badly outdated before they reach the public. Thus, information that should be generally available has remained in the hands of a few. We present here a website that permits the instantaneous production of species lists for any locality in the Brazilian Amazon. The lists are predictive, based on the distributions of all individual species and do not depend on the particular site having been studied previously. Species distributions that form the database are modified and fine-tuned versions of published range maps, incorporating unpublished information and rules of probable occurrence, and can be updated regularly. Information on preferred habitat is provided for each species, as well as linked pages defining and illustrating habitats. Future versions will include ever more-precise distributional data, user input, and relative abundances. The site’s target audiences include ecotourists and ecotourism providers, governmental and non-governmental agencies interested in evaluating environmental impact, biogeographers, and the ornithological community. Our hope is that by making basic distributional information generally available, particularly local species lists, we will stimulate ecotourism and conservation, see an improvement in the quality of policy and decision-making related to conservation and development, and free up experts from routine data-processing chores to contribute to novel research.

Session:  Biodiversity - Data/metadata integration and information dissemination: PPBio challenges and solutions.

Presentation Type:  Oral