AlgaeBase is a global species database 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 micr ...

, both

marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military ...

and

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does incl ...

, 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. The Flemish government established the institute in 1999 together with the province of ...

(VLIZ) signed an end-user license agreement regarding the Electronic Intellectual Property of AlgaeBase. This allows the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) to include taxonomic names of algae in WoRMS, thereby allowing WoRMS, as part of the Aphia database, 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 '' constituent colleges'') and ''recognised colleges'' set up under the Irish Universit ...

'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 t ...

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 conventions of everyday speech to the internationally ag ...

and distribution is included, and the algae covered include terrestrial as well as

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'. ...

, 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 gover ...

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 The Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) was a private foundation created in 1982 by Irish-American businessman Chuck Feeney. The Atlantic Philanthropies focused its giving on health, social, and politically left-leaning public policy causes in Australi ...

, and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

. 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, 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'') ...

research. the main sponsors of the database are the Phycological Society of America, the British Phycological Society, 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