ANNOUNCEMENT OF Mallos

[Hesiquio Benitez Diaz]

ANNOUNCEMENT OF Mallos,  AN ON-LINE ACCESS ENGINE FOR BIODIVERSITY DATA.
November 1999.

Mexico is one of the five most biodiverse countries of the world. The
conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of the benefits
derived of the use of all components of its rich biodiversity require the
creation of complex information systems. One of the more daunting tasks in
any biodiversity information system is the updating of the data. In order
to solve this problem Mexico decided to rely on the original sources of
biodiversity information. The core element in a comprehensive, multiscale
biodiversity information system is the huge amount of specimen data
residing in museums and herbaria. Well-curated scientific collections
provide the bridge, through their specimens, between geographically
structured data and the vast sources of information accessible via the
scientific names. Therefore, a method to reach those essential sources of
specimens data had to be developed. In November of 1993 twenty Mexican
institutions agreed, in principle, to allow access to the information in
their collections. Before this goal could be reached, however, a large
number of technical, financial and organizational problems had to be
solved.

We announce that the first version of the Gateway created by the Mexican
Network of Biodiversity Information (REMIB after its Spanish initials) can
now be consulted through the Web page of CONABIO
(www.conabio.gob.mx/remib/doctos/remib.html). REMIB is a consortium of
Mexican and foreign institutions that maintain taxonomic collections and
that have agreed to allow part or all the data associated to their
specimens to be accessible on-line, through the Gateway provided by
CONABIO. 

REMIB allows on-line consults to the data on the collections of a growing
number of institutions, and provide links to several major web-based
biodiversity information providers such as Genebank, ITIS, Missouri
Botanical Gardens and CalFlora. Although REMIB was created to answer the
needs of Mexican institutions, its software and overall concept is general
and it could be of interest to institutions in any country.

REMIB has two components. One is the organization as such, with a
Directive Council, and Technical and Academic Committees. These provide a
forum to discuss policy issues such as intellectual property rights,
quality control and metadata standards. The Directive Council and the
Academic Committees also decide on the acceptance of new members to REMIB
and provide advice about joining international efforts like the Clearing
House Mechanism, NABIN  (North American Biodiversity Information Network),
IABIN (Interamerican Biodiversity Information Network), or the GBIF
(Global Biodiversity Information Facility). The second part is the
technical implementation required to access distributed databases of a
variety of origins and formats.  

Raúl Jiménez of CONABIO developed the search engine of REMIB. This
technology is based on the use of TCP/IP sockets and is efficient and
safe, since the information travels encrypted and never overload the
servers or the Gateway. The query is sent over the net using TCP/IP and
the nodes receive the query (which is interpreted taking into account the
format of the residing database) and send back the answer in very fast and
efficient unformatted "crunches". The REMIB server (called Mallos, after
the genus of a social spider endemic to México) reconstructs the strings
and provides the user with an output in the requested format.

David Vieglais of Kansas University developed another similar system,
called Species Analyst (http://chipotle.nhm.ukans.edu/nabin), which uses
the Z39.50 metadata protocol. The Species Analyst was developed by request
of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation of the NAFTA countries, to
facilitate the acquisition of biodiversity information required for
decision taking. The organization behind the Species Analyst is NABIN.

In the medium term, the intention of both REMIB and NABIN steering
committees is to ensure full compatibility between these two technologies
and eventually to make them converge to a single Gateway. 

Mexico will be using REMIB and its associated software as fundamental
tools to address the growing needs of multiple users for detailed, updated
and high quality biodiversity data. Currently there are seven Mexican and
one American institutions accessible through the REMIB Gateway. At the end
of the year REMIB expects to have reached agreements with another four
(two Mexican, one American and another British). 

The team of Mexican scientists and computer experts that conceived and
implemented REMIB are proud to present to the international community the
first version of Mallos, which we believe has potential for advance the
fulfillment of the Biodiversity Convention objectives, and we invite all
of you to use it at  www.conabio.gob.mx/remib/doctos/remib.html and to
send comments or criticism to REMIB´s e-mail address
(remib at xolo.conabio.gob.mx.).

PS. Please, forward this message to whom you may consider of interest.

Thanks

Hesiquio Benitez Diaz
Director de Servicios Externos 
CONABIO
Fernandez Leal #59-a, Coyoacan, Mexico D.F. 04020, MEXICO
Tels. (52) 55-54-51-82, 54-22-35-44, 54-22-35-45 FAX 55-54-33-50
e-mail: hbenitez at xolo.conabio.gob.mx 
TALK: hbenitez at hbenitez.conabio.gob.mx
CONABIO'S HOMEPAGE: www.conabio.gob.mx