Globales Artregister Tagfalter
	Global Butterfly Species Register

GloBIS-D:  The continuation of GART

After the funding period for GART (April 2000 to December 2003) ended the project could be continued within the new funding program GBIF-Germany of the BMBF under its new acronym GloBIS-D (Global Butterfly Information System Deutschland). The main results are available on the GloBIS-D homepage: Hierarchical taxon tree with information from the taxonomic database and images of primary type specimens from German and international museum collections (work in progress, to be expanded).

GART Introduction

The aim of the GART project is to provide access to general information about butterflies on the basis of a global taxonomic catalogue. In a first step, a global, fully synonymic species register for two families of butterflies, Swallowtails (Papilionidae) and Whites (Pieridae), will be developed based on comprehensive taxonomic databases for these two butterfly groups. Furthermore, all butterfly type specimens housed in the institutional collections of the cooperating GART partners will be recorded, photographed, and databased. For selected taxa within the Papilionidae and Pieridae, a comprehensive species information system will be developed offering data about distribution, ecology, and morphology of individual species as well as links to other existing data sources. The compiled species register and the underlying taxonomic and type specimen databases will be made available through a central user interface on the internet via the SYSTAX information system in co-operation with the University of Ulm and other EDIS partners.

The GART project is jointly undertaken by partners from eight major German natural history museums, and is co-ordinated by the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart (SMNS). The project is intended to provide a distinct contribution to the international 'Global Butterfly Information System' (GloBIS) initiative, jointly undertaken with The Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima; The Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO, Canberra; The National Museum of Natural History, Leiden, The Natural History Museum, London; and the United States National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Goals of GART

The following products can be expected from GART within the first three years of operation, which all should be available via the internet:

			Some types of Herrich-Schäffer rediscovered in the collection of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart:
	comprehensive taxonomic databases for the families Papilionidae and Pieridae (ca 12,000 taxa);
	global synonymic species catalogues for the Papilionidae and Pieridae (ca 1,700 species) with distribution records;
	database of primary butterfly type specimens housed in German collections with images (ca 10,000 specimens);see pics
	a global bibliographic database of (taxonomic) butterfly literature;
	a comprehensive species information system for selected taxa of the Papilionidae and Pieridae.

To accomplish these goals, GART will also seek to encourage scientific co-operation and input from specialists and institutions both nationally and around the globe. In addition to increase co-operation between the partner institutions, GART also attempts to establish a network of interested individual butterfly researchers who would like to involve themselves in realising the project goals. For this end, a series of workshops and an international meeting on entomological databases (within the EDIS framework project) is planned to provide a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas.

Perspectives

In the longer term, the following goals were intended for GART:

	implementation of other available EDIS tools (GIS, interactive identification aids, etc) for butterfly data;
	completion of the species information system for all Papilionidae and Pieridae;
	development of taxonomic databases for the remaining four butterfly families (Nymphalidae, Riodinidae, Lycaenidae, Hesperiidae) in cooperation with the international GloBIS initiative;
	development of specimen record databases for butterfly holdings in German collections;
	interlinking of GART with available national and international biodiversity information systems (e.g., GBIF, Species 2000).

The long term aim is to develop with GART an international model system which can serve as a template for providing global access to biodiversity information, particularly for species-rich groups. Furthermore, it is hoped that GART will help to share biodiversity information and, in particular, taxonomic knowledge globally and to also contribute to capacity building in butterfly systematics.

GART/GloBIS Workshop Butterfly taxonomy on the internet – issues and challenges of a global, web-based, taxonomic information system

21^st to 23^rd May 2003 at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany

	Program (pdf, 17 KB)
	Workshop presentations and URLs (wordfile, 38 KB)
	Participants list (pdf, 32 KB)
	A few snapshots

GART Partners

Contacts

Development of these websites was supported by the
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the
State Museum of Natural History (SMNS), Stuttgart, Germany.
© Joachim Holstein, Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart, Germany