Taiwanese Encyclopedia of Life to be established

The GBIF node for Chinese Taipei, TaiBIF, has received a three-year government grant to establish a new Taiwanese database and website for the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).

TaiEOL aims to have species information pages on 16,000 Taiwanese native species, including more than 8,000 endemic species. These pages will include taxon descriptions and images.

Oncorhynchus formosanus, an endemic species from Taiwan (Photo by Colin Kuo-Chang Wen)

The national Chinese Taipei e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP), which aims to promote national digital archives and e-learning applications for the development of Chinese Taipei, has already accumulated a large amount of biodiversity information from various databases, and this will feed into TaiEOL. The Forestry Bureau will also provide information on 4,000 native vascular plants.

In addition, scholars, experts and citizen scientists will be invited to contribute content to the pages.