Biodiversity Informatics

, and the linking of this information with genomic, geospatial and other biological and non-biological datasets [1]. The first use of the term can be traced back as far as 1993 [2]. In 2001 Berendsohn wrote that "Biodiversity Informatics is the application of information technology (IT) tools and approaches to biodiversity information, principally at the organismic level. It thus deals with information capture, storage provision, retrieval, and analysis, focused on individual organisms, populations, and species, and their interactions. It covers information generated by the fields of systematics, evolutionary biology, population biology, and ecology, as well as more applied fields such as conservation biology and ecological management." According to Soberon and Peterson Biodiversity Informatics "includes the application of information technologies to the management, algorithmic exploration, analysis and interpretation of primary data regarding life, particularly at the species level of organization." [4] Johnson defined Biodiversity Informatics as "an emerging field that applies information management tools to the management and analysis of species occurrence, taxonomic character, and image data." [5] Sarkar drew an important distinction between the term "biodiversity informatics" and the term "bioinformatics", noting that "bioinformatics is an established field that has made significant advances in the development of systems and techniques to organize contemporary molecular data." [6]