Biodiversity and bioinformatics: toward a 21st century approach to comparative morphology

Species descriptions have not kept pace with the need for more and better information about what is in the biological world, and there are calls from many quarters both for an increase in knowledge of biodiversity and for a renaissance in taxonomy. In this talk I will explore new ideas in information technology that address both of these issues. Specifically, I will discuss and describe new technologies for creation and refinement of character ontologies and the machine reading of taxonomic monographs. These tools have the capacity to increase access to taxonomic information, and to make it searchable and understandable in new ways. I will also address some near- and mid-term possibilities for the machine reading of insect morphology using high-quality three dimensional images. This technology is being developed specifically for insects, but will likely apply to other taxa as well, and in addition to making type specimens widely available, may also change the way comparative morphology is practiced.