ATBI? A reality any longer or just hype?

[Neal Evenhuis]

In all of his pessimism toward ATBI, Chris has forgotten a success in
"ATBI". It is called the Hawaii Biological Survey.

It does things a little differently than what ATBI likes to do;
however, it has been in existence since 1992 and, as far as I am
aware, is the most complete inventory of species of organisms for any
region in the United States -- maybe even the world. Much of the
credit for its success goes to Scott Miller and Allen Allison who
created the concept and working methodology.

Instead of going out first and collecting and then trying to figure
out what we have collected and then gather up the literature (the
ATBI method), HBS completes authority files for checklists of
published species records based on the literature -- and then goes
out to continually inventory the region (in our case, Hawaii) and
continually update existing authority files and make them available
to a wide audience (e.g., databases via the web) where we encourage
updates and corrections to our databases. We also publish updated
records for Hawaii via an annual publication, the Records of the
Hawaii Biological Survey, which has been in existence since 1995.

Benefits to the HBS way: in 8 or so years we pretty much *know* what
species we have in Hawaii -- especially the historical ones (some of
which may be extinct now). We are still in need of inventorying the:
nematodes, protists, bacteria, and prokaryotes. Yet, it's about 95%
of the taxa occurring here that we have a handle on. I'd be
interested to hear from anyone else out there who knows of a better
total for an ATBI survey in a region as large as ours.

If anyone wants to check the checklists (and other databases) we
currently have available on the web, please head on over to:

http://hbs.bishopmuseum.org/hbsdb.html


Yes, staffing to do ATBIs will always be a problem. We at HBS try to
obviate the problem of not enough specialists to ID what we collect
by getting a handle on what has already been published first. That
way, others have already done the work for us. From that basis, we
can fine-tune any mis-identifications and collect and identify
new-to-science and newly introduced alien species through a network
of partners to help us over a long period of time.

It is virtually impossible to achieve an inventory of what IS out
there at this time without doing the un-sexy groundwork of literature
searching and ID verification first.

Everyone likes to go out and collect and THEN go figure out what
you've gotten. But it probably doesn't achieve the efficiency level
required to show funding agencies actual products in a timely manner
because the IDs take so long.

HBS has products to show people now. Hard copies of checklists as
well as web interfaces of databases. We do not claim that this is the
end-all. We continually update our products and encourage our
colleagues to help us make a better product.


Aloha,

Neal

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Dr. Neal L. Evenhuis                            ph: 808-848-4138
Chairman, Department of Natural Sciences        fax: 808-847-8252
Bernice P. Bishop Museum                        web: hbs.bishopmuseum.org
1525 Bernice Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96817-2704
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