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At first encounter, GBIF may seem somewhat esoteric, but the applications for the data it provides are many. GBIF allows access to data that serves not only the bench scientist, but also the natural resource manager, the backyard nature enthusiast, the dedicated birdwatcher, and the primary school student. Internet-oriented information managers can now develop search engines and web interfaces that will allow multiple user groups to access this information in new and exciting ways.
Examples of potential users include:
- an elementary-school class that is studying praying mantises, and wants to know about their prey and their predators.
- a robotics researcher who needs inspiration from nature about how to solve a particular engineering problem.
- a curator at a storage site for genetic resources who needs to know whether the tissue samples from an organism of interest in her collection are a thorough sampling from throughout the range of the species.
- a gardener who would like to reintroduce native species into his back yard in central Chicago (or Singapore, Taipei, New Delhi…)
- a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Health who needs to know what species of insects occur in her country that might become vectors for an emergent disease.
- a graduate student in southeast Asia who needs to know all the names (scientific and vernacular) that have ever been applied to a plant species from tropical Africa that he is studying for his thesis on its physiology and potential for cultivation.
- a conservation biologist who needs to understand the habitat requirements and naturally co-occurring species of an endangered species of primate (or whale, otter, orchid, parrot ...)
- a molecular genetics researcher who is looking for a gene in a member of the agriculturally important grasses that is analogous in function to one she has found in goosefoot that allows the plant to tolerate dry, hot, saline conditions.
- a PhD taxonomist in Europe, who is beginning the daunting task of monographing a genus of primarily tropical beetles that comprises at least 1,000 species.
- a pharmaceutical chemist who has found a promising drug compound in a fungus species, and would like to know if there are related species that produce similar compounds or the same compound in greater quantities.
- a farmer who needs to know if there are wild relatives of a genetically modified crop plant in the area of his fields.
- a government agency that must interrogate multiple large datasets in order to set aside a biodiversity reservation that will preserve the largest possible number of species within the smallest possible area, while still providing opportunities for ecotourism and sustainable harvest of wild products.
- a natural resource manager who needs to prevent the advance or combat the depredations of invasive species.
- a taxonomist in Latin America, who needs to identify the specimen he has just collected, and determine if it is known or is new to science.
- an ecological tourist who would like to know what organisms she will see when she visits Peru (or Ghana, Tanzania, India, Mexico...)
And so on, and on, and on. The applications and utility are innumerable, and of inestimable value. Because many different kinds of interfaces that each serve a different audience can be developed to access the same data resource, this one focused effort to provide primary data about biodiversity is an investment that has already paid off in multiple ways-and the payoffs will continue far into the future.
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