plankton*net – an integrated distributed knowledge environment for phytoplankton

David J Patterson The Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass 02543 USA

The importance of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes in marine and other aquatic environments demands contemporary knowledge environments and in particular structures capable of linking outcomes of molecular inventories to traditional descriptive and ecological data. This presents a challenge that we believe can be addressed best by building internet resources within co-operative workgroup environments. Plankton*net seeks to create a knowledge environment for information about phytoplankton. Plankton*net is conceived as a distributed structure involving many local star*sites. Individual star*sites can be formed quickly by using combining local data around a software template. This allows sites to inherit a variety of generic navigation and communication tools. These include the TNS structure provided by the uBio project (http://www.ubio.org) that uses taxonomy to organize biological information, to navigate around the information and as the basis for taxon-specific links within a star*site. Dynamic and customizable outlinks allow taxon-specific links to be made between star*sites or other remote sources of data. We are developing taxon-specific synchronous and asynchronous communications environments to improve interactions within the plankton*net team or provide external visitors with access to experts. Because star*sites share a common template, we can dynamically integrate the resources held at all plankton*net sites. This knowledge environment allows a community of experts to work co-operatively, and the benefits are that duplication is reduced, the product is cumulative, and ambitious goals can be set and achieved. For example, we plan to create a centralized clearing-house (micro*pedia) containing, or linking to, core descriptive information for all phytoplankton. The distributed nature of the structure, if coupled with an archiving service, insulates the products against funding instability. Plankton*net is still at an early stage of development and at this stage we seek participation and input to set goals and priorities.