Resources for exploring biodiversity in BioMimicry
Top-down approaches (starting with the problem):
http://www.asknature.org/aof/browse
BioMimicry Institute’s taxonomy of problems and list of some of the organisms that have solved
those problems
Bottom-up approaches (starting with the species):
Tree of Life web project – summary of our current understanding of the evolutionary
relationships between all life on earth (extant and extinct). An excellent place to start to
determine what your species of interest in related to and identify multiple origins of a trait.
http://tolweb.org/tree/
Life history, natural history, and ecology databases:
Images of life on earth: http://www.arkive.org/
Encyclopedia of Life: http://eol.org/
Online database of animal natural history: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/
Amazing scientific archive of video and sound recordings: http://macaulaylibrary.org/
Evolutionarily distinct species: http://www.edgeofexistence.org/
Detailed accounts of all North American birds: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/
Life history (and aging) database of 4000+ species:
http://genomics.senescence.info/species/query.php
Guide to identifying most North American insects & spiders:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740
Population trends and occurrence in North American birds (breeding bird survey)
http://137.227.245.162/bbs/ and California butterflies: http://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/
Australian reptile database: http://www.arod.com.au/arod/
Working list of all plant species: http://www.theplantlist.org/
Some info on plant ranges and natural history: http://plants.usda.gov/java/
Conifer diversity and natural history: http://www.conifers.org/
Centers of plant diversity: http://botany.si.edu/projects/cpd/
Western Australia flora database: http://florabase.dec.wa.gov.au/
Online digitized collections:
Global biodiversity information facility: http://www.gbif.org/
http://www.insectcollection.org/ (in progress)
Butterflies of North America: http://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/Neotropical.htm
Exploring genes and proteins and microbes
GenBank – database of nucleotide and protein sequences for over 100,000 species
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/
Database of genes and pathways: http://www.genome.jp/kegg/
Database of ribosomal RNA operons in bacteria: http://rrndb.mmg.msu.edu/
Microbial biocatalysis database: http://umbbd.ethz.ch/
Bacterial strain database http://www.straininfo.net/