• Soberon, J. & Peterson, A. T. (2004) Biodiversity informatics: managing and applying primary biodiversity data. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. vol. 359 no. 1444 689-698. (doi: 10.1098/rstb.2003.1439) 

<ABSTRACT> Recently, advances in information technology and an increased willingness to share primary biodiversity data are enabling unprecedented access to it. By combining presences of species data with electronic cartography via a number of algorithms, estimating niches of species and their areas of distribution becomes feasible at resolutions one to three orders of magnitude higher than it was possible a few years ago. Some examples of the power of that technique are presented. For the method to work, limitations such as lack of high-quality taxonomic determination, precise georeferencing of the data and availability of high-quality and updated taxonomic treatments of the groups must be overcome. These are discussed, together with comments on the potential of these biodiversity informatics techniques not only for fundamental studies but also as a way for developing countries to apply state of the art bioinformatic methods and large quantities of data, in practical ways, to tackle issues of biodiversity management.

＜本文＞

2. BIODIVERSITY INFORMATICS

本文の第２章が「Biodiversity informatics」というタイトルになっている。著者の認識ではBIが可能とするものは以下：

1) Inferring ecological niches

2) Predicting distributional areas

4. CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS

本文の第４章で課題（問題点）について述べている。

• The dynamic nature of taxonomy means that databases that are not maintained actively may soon be outdated, with synonyms comprising 10–30% or more of names in many databases (Gaston & Mound 1993; Alroy 2002 and see figure 4).
• Hence, in a time when gigabytes of primary biodiversity information are becoming available to all, issues related to quality control are more crucial than ever (Reynolds 1998; Soberon et al. 2002).
• 様々なデータベースの形成背景が不均一なためにQCがさらに難しくなっている。問題の種類は以下。

１）誤同定
２）分類が古くなること
３）不正確な位置情報