Proceedings of the Symposium on Structural Informatics Book

Demand for the conservation of rapidly disappearing plants and ecological communities has provided botanists, systematists, and computer scientists with a unified goal--the production of a computer-based information checklist for all of the world's plants. Progress has been rapid in recent years. From a diverse array of disconnected systems and databases, there now exists a single, internationally supervised organization that is working to create an Internet accessible common directory of existing databases and a computer-based vascular plants action list. This book details the proceedings of that organization's symposium which examined the wide range of options open to the biodiversity community in creating a global plant species information system. Questions addressed include how an effective single taxonomic catalog and reference system can be conceived and implemented; what computer system, software, and data structures might enable both contributions from many sites and global access to the information; and how the needs of the biodiversity, conservation, pharmaceutical, agrochemical, biotechnology, and plant breeding communities can be met by using the plant catalog as a backbone for a variety of other databases of applied botanical data. This volume will be welcomed by all those in the fields of biodiversity and conservation who want to follow the details of this stimulating and important endeavor.