The Biodiversity Atlas – India is a species-based bioinformatics platform. It is designed for aggregating, displaying and analysing biodiversity data from tropical developing countries and other biodiversity hotspots such as India. It is a distributed platform of stand-alone, taxon-specific, natural history websites that organize all the information under individual species pages. The species pages themselves are organized following standard taxonomic classification, which makes navigation between closely related species easier. The species pages offer information about the species taxonomy, geographical distribution based on spot records, interspecific associations, protection under India's WildLife (Protection) Act, 1972, or IUCN Red List, etc., that summarize aspects of the biology and conservation of species. We extensively use this platform and the family of natural history websites that it drives for research as well as educational and other outreach activities.
Most of the data on Biodiversity Atlas – India websites is contributed by citizen scientists, but the data are peer-reviewed by advanced naturalists and professional biologists before they are made public. This makes these websites especially reliable compared to many other citizen science platforms. This way we grow a bit slower but the end product is stronger.
Read more about our recent projects in these research publications. Most of our research publications are collaborations between professional scientists and amateur naturalists and citizen scientists, offering opportunities for a true scientific engagement between scientific establishments and ordinary citizens.