Taxonomy & Evolution WG Lead: Dr Adrian Glover, Natural History Museum, London, UK. Email: aglover@nhm.ac.uk
Please contact Adrian if you wish to be an ACTIVE participant of this INDEEP WG.
MAIN ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS
Deep Sea ID v1.0.
The first version of Deep Sea ID, an iOS field guide app to the marine life of the deep sea, is now available. You can download iPhone and iPad versions of the app for free from the App Store now.
The app is the result of a project funded by INDEEP and carried out by personnel from the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre and the World Register of Marine Species. It allows offline access to the World Register of Deep-Sea Species (WoRDSS) and currently stores on your device the taxonomic information for over 20,000 deep-sea species, over 350 high-resolution photographs of deep-sea specimens as well as links to online taxonomic tools, sources and important references.
The app is designed to improve access to taxonomic information for researchers and contractors working at sea or in the laboratory as well as educators and science communicators who wish to learn more about the remarkable diversity of deep-sea life. The app will be regularly updated with more images, and we welcome contributions (see below). All photographs include full credit and contact details and authors can retain copyright.
For further information on the criteria we have used for inclusion in the database, please read the information on the WoRDSS homepage.
Data Sources & Acknowledgements
The taxonomic information held in the World Register of Deep-Sea Species (WoRDSS) is sourced directly from theWorld Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). WoRMS is managed by an international Steering Committee, a Board of Editors and the IT team at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Belgium. Both the WoRMS and WoRDSS websites are hosted at VLIZ.
The species lists and images that are used to create Deep Sea ID are currently maintained at the Natural History Museum in London, UK by Dr Adrian Glover and at the University of Plymouth, UK by Dr Nicholas Higgs. At theNational Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK, Dr Tammy Horton is contributing to the species lists and coordinating the collation of taxonomic identification resources.
Deep Sea ID has been developed by the Natural History Museum, London with the iOS software development by Heathwest Systems Ltd.
Contributing Images and Correcting Errors: We are currently sourcing more images for the next version of the app. Please consider contributing! We also welcome contributions and corrections to the main database. Further information including details on how to contribute new images are available on the WoRDSS website. Please contact us with any questions.
WoRDSS - World Register of Deep-Sea Species
WoRDSS is a taxonomic database of deep-sea speices based on teh World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). This site was launched in December 2012 as a project of INDEEP. The primary goal of the project is to build a comprehensive database of known deep-sea species and to present this as a thematic species database (TSD) of WoRMS, with all data dynamically linked to WoRMS and their team of taxonomic editors. A secondary goal is to accumulate high quality specimen images of deep-sea species and to present these on both the website and the iOS app (Deep Sea ID, currently in development) that allows offline-viewing of the complete database and imagery to assist with identifications at sea and in the laboratory. Through WoRDSS, we are also providing taxonomic references (sources) that will allow researchers and educators easier access to identification literature.
The WoRDSS project provides an oepn-access source of quality taxonomic information and imagery on deep-sea species and at the same time enhances the WoRMS database through the provision of images, new soures and editorship. Contributions and corrections are welcome.
Workshop proposal "Evolution in the Deep Sea: Origins, Adaptation and Diversity".
In September 2012, Adrian and other WG members submitted a proposal to the Royal Society to supply funds (in addition to those already earmarked for this from INDEEP) for an international meeting entitled “Evolution in the Deep Sea: Origins, Adaptation and Diversity”. This meeting will bring together a new inter-disciplinary group of scientists to explore how life evolved in the deep and the remarkable adaptations of deep-sea animals. The Evolution meeting is now being organised by Adrian, Holly Bik, Mike Rex, Moriaki Yasuhara. This topic is most timely, as we will provide the first synthesis of these new palaeontological and molecular lines of evidence for the deep sea at a time when humans are looking to explore and potentially exploit the deep sea and deep-sea biodiversity. Our meeting will be the first time that these groups have been brought together, and build upon the new datasets that have been recently generated. We anticipate an exciting cross-fertilisation of ideas and an issue in Philosophical Transactions that sets a new agenda in this field.
List of deep-sea taxonomic experts
This list of deep-sea taxonomic experts is to appear on this website shortly (activity led by Tammy Horton).
