I would like to share some online tools that I find very useful when determining whether a species might be new, and during the process of describing new species. This is geared towards amphibians, but many of these resources apply more broadly to other taxa.
Is it new? Tools to compare materials and information
AmphibiaWeb (www.amphibiaweb.org): this comprehensive portal provides information on natural history, population declines and conservation, current taxonomy and amphibian news. Species accounts include links to Amphibian Species of World, Genbank, VertNet and FonoZoo (see below).
Amphibian Species of the World (http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia): Darrel Frost's taxonomic catalog of all amphibian species, this is the best resource to retrieve past taxonomic changes, and to check current taxonomy.
VertNet (www.vertnet.org): this searchable database aggregates specimen data from hundreds of musem collections across the world. It is an extremely useful tool to discover and locate comparative material and associated data.
Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org): this website stores nearly 50 million pages of biodiversity literature, including scanned copies (which can be downloaded as PDFs) of species descriptions from the XIX and XX centuries.
What should I sequence?
PhyLoTa (http://sirloinpope.com/): This website returns information about the potential phylogenetic data sets (clusters, or sets of homologous sequences) that can be constructed from the database for taxa of interest. Very useful to choose genes for sequencing by maximizing species sampling.
Describing the species: digital repositories
Zoobank (http://zoobank.org): this is the official registry of zoological nomenclature, and the place to register new nomenclatural acts and papers describing the new taxa, especially useful for journals that do not include nomenclature registration as part of their publication process.
Genbank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank): The NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences, including tools to upload and submit newly generated sequences to assign accession numbers for each sequence.
Calphotos (http://calphotos.berkeley.edu): database storing biodiversity and natural history photographs. When uploading photographs of a recently described species, you should email Calphotos first with a copy of the publication to make sure Calphotos will incorporate the new species in their database.
Fonoteca (http://www.fonozoo.com): largest database of anuran calls (>1000 species), including form to submit new recording and have them indexed for publication.
Is it new? Tools to compare materials and information
AmphibiaWeb (www.amphibiaweb.org): this comprehensive portal provides information on natural history, population declines and conservation, current taxonomy and amphibian news. Species accounts include links to Amphibian Species of World, Genbank, VertNet and FonoZoo (see below).
Amphibian Species of the World (http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia): Darrel Frost's taxonomic catalog of all amphibian species, this is the best resource to retrieve past taxonomic changes, and to check current taxonomy.
VertNet (www.vertnet.org): this searchable database aggregates specimen data from hundreds of musem collections across the world. It is an extremely useful tool to discover and locate comparative material and associated data.
Biodiversity Heritage Library (www.biodiversitylibrary.org): this website stores nearly 50 million pages of biodiversity literature, including scanned copies (which can be downloaded as PDFs) of species descriptions from the XIX and XX centuries.
What should I sequence?
PhyLoTa (http://sirloinpope.com/): This website returns information about the potential phylogenetic data sets (clusters, or sets of homologous sequences) that can be constructed from the database for taxa of interest. Very useful to choose genes for sequencing by maximizing species sampling.
Describing the species: digital repositories
Zoobank (http://zoobank.org): this is the official registry of zoological nomenclature, and the place to register new nomenclatural acts and papers describing the new taxa, especially useful for journals that do not include nomenclature registration as part of their publication process.
Genbank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank): The NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences, including tools to upload and submit newly generated sequences to assign accession numbers for each sequence.
Calphotos (http://calphotos.berkeley.edu): database storing biodiversity and natural history photographs. When uploading photographs of a recently described species, you should email Calphotos first with a copy of the publication to make sure Calphotos will incorporate the new species in their database.
Fonoteca (http://www.fonozoo.com): largest database of anuran calls (>1000 species), including form to submit new recording and have them indexed for publication.
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