WWW news from Hawaii Biological Survey/Bishop Museum

[Scott Miller]

As demonstrated at last week's Hawaii Conservation Conference, Bishop
Museum's Hawaii Biological Survey is pleased to announce the following
steps toward an integrated WWW database on Hawaii's biodiversity.

DETAILED INFORMATION AND IMAGES FOR SELECTED TAXA: The endemic damselfly
genus Megalagrion is featured now, with more to come.  Maps comparing
historic and recent distribution records, color images of adults and
immatures, as well as habitat photographs are available, along with full
records of specimen data in Bishop Museum and full bibliographies.

To see the Megalagrion demonstration links, go to:
http://www.bishop.hawaii.org/bishop/HBS/arthrosearch.html
Type "Megalagrion" in the genus field, submit query, then click on
"full record" for any species and follow the links in the resulting
report.

IMAGES, mostly color photographs of living organisms, are available for
many other Hawaiian insects, birds and plants.  Many more images and taxa
are being added, so keep returning to see more at:

http://www.bishop.hawaii.org/bishop/HBS/images.html

This is another enhancement in our growing TAXONOMIC AUTHORITY FILES:
Species checklists for the 22,000 species of Hawaiian organisms are being
posted.  Terrestrial arthropods, land and freshwater snails, flowering
plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds are now available in
searchable interfaces (12,528 species in total).  The HBS web server now
includes current status as listed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for
all threatened and endangered species, as well as candidate species
(including what used to be called "C2" species) for all but a few fish and
invertebrates (to be added shortly).

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS COMING: Hawaii Biological Survey has just received
National Science Foundation funding for partnership with San Diego
Supercomputer Center and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and
Synthesis to further develop WWW tools for display and analysis of
ecological data, especially 3 dimensional visualization and analysis.

HBS thanks our financial supporters and collaborators, especially
MacArthur Foundation, National Biological Service, National Science
Foundation, Center for Plant Conservation, Smithsonian Institution, US
Fish and Wildlife Service, and Hawaii Dept. of  Land and Natural Resources.

For further information:

http://www.bishop.hawaii.org/bishop/hbs/hbs1.html
email: hbs at bishop.bishop.hawaii.org