AlgaeBase is a

global species database A Global Species Database (GSD) is a digital catalog of organisms often defined around a conservation purpose for the organisms of interest. GSDs attempt to be globally inclusive of species within their inclusion parameters versus local species dat ...

of information on all groups of

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

, both marine and freshwater, as well as

sea-grass Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families (Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and Cymodoceaceae), all in the orde ...

History

AlgaeBase began in March 1996,pdf
/ref> founded by Michael Guiry. CC-BY icon

Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
licence. (Se
here
. By 2005, the database contained about 65,000 names. In 2013, AlgaeBase and the

Flanders Marine Institute The Flanders Marine Institute (Dutch: Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee, VLIZ) provides a focal point for marine scientific research in Flanders, northern Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium ...

(VLIZ) signed an end-user license agreement regarding the Electronic Intellectual Property of AlgaeBase. This allows the

World Register of Marine Species The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a taxonomic database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms. Content The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scientific specialist ...

(WoRMS) to include taxonomic names of algae in WoRMS, thereby allowing WoRMS, as part of the

Aphia database ''Aphia minuta'', the transparent goby, is a species of the goby native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean where it can be found from Trondheim, Norway to Morocco. It is also found in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It is a pe ...

, to make its overview of all described marine species more complete. Synchronisation of the AlgaeBase data with Aphia and WoRMS was undertaken manually until March 2015, but this was very time-consuming, so an online application was developed to semi-automate the synchronisation, launching in 2015 in conjunction with Michael Guiry and the chief programmer of AlgaeBase, Pier Kuipers. After a long phase of further development and testing, the AlgaeBase harvester tool was implemented by the WoRMS data management team in early 2019. Since then, newly-added species in AlgaeBase are added to Aphia and, if marine, to WoRMS as well.

Description

The database is hosted at the

National University of Ireland The National University of Ireland (NUI) ( ga, Ollscoil na hÉireann) is a federal university system of ''constituent universities'' (previously called ''university college, constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under t ...

's Ryan Institute, in

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a City status in Ireland, city in the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lo ...

. It includes about all types of algae, as well as one group of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s, the sea-grasses. Information about each species'

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

nomenclature Nomenclature (, ) is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal naming conventions, conventions of everyday speech to the i ...

and distribution is included, and the algae covered include

terrestrial Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth. Terrestrial may also refer to: * Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...

as well as marine and freshwater species, such as

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'. Ph ...

, and freshwater algae. marine species have the best coverage, and sea-grass is included, although it is a

rather than an alga. As of 2014 there were nearly 17,000 images, and the database was being used by 2,000–3,000 individual visitors each day. As of 2019, there were about 157,000 species and infraspecies in AlgaeBase.

Support and funding

The compilation of the data was funded by the

Irish Government The Government of Ireland ( ga, Rialtas na hÉireann) is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland. The Constitution of Ireland vests executive authority in a government which is headed by the , the head of government. The governm ...

Department of Education and Science's Programme for Research in Third-level Institutions (

PRTLI The Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions (PRTLI) was an Irish Government programme that provided integrated financial support for research. It was administered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA). History and funding The programm ...

) 2, 3 and 4 programmes, to the Ryan Institute and the Environmental Change Institute, as well as by Atlantic Philanthropies, and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

. The synchronisation between AlgaeBase and Aphia was possible through support of the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone. LifeWatch, the E-Science European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, is a distributed

virtual laboratory The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life. T ...

, which is used for different aspects of

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

research. the main sponsors of the database are the

Phycological Society of America The Phycological Society of America (PSA) is a professional society, founded in 1946, that is dedicated to the advancement of phycology, the study of algae. The PSA is responsible for the publication of ''Journal of Phycology'' and organizes an ...

, the

British Phycological Society The British Phycological Society, founded in 1952, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom promoting the study of algae. Members interests include all aspects of the study of algae, including both natural biodiversity and applied uses. ...

, the

International Phycological Society The International Phycological Society is a learned society of phycologists. It was established in 1960. The Society publishes a bimonthly academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholars ...

, and the Korean Phycological Society. Programming is carried out by Pier Kuipers and Caoilte Guiry, and Michael Guiry. Jonathan Guthrie was responsible for programming much of earlier versions.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Algaebase Algae Biodiversity databases Databases in Ireland Online taxonomy databases

History

Description

Support and funding

References

Further reading

External links