Summary
The Antarctic Biodiversity Database developed and hosted by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC), holds data and information on Antarctic and subantarctic flora and fauna in support of the SCAR Life Sciences programme Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic (EBA). This database was started in 2000 in support of EBA’s predecessor Regional Sensitivity to Climate Change in Antarctic terrestrial and limnetic ecosystems (RiSCC). It is organised through a catalogue of collections containing details such as description, acknowledgments, data source, list of taxa types and regions. The samples and/or observations from each collection are classified into one of three possible habitat domains - terrestrial, limnetic or marine. Links are provided, where possible, to metadata records held in the Antarctic Master Directory. Being in a central repository, data can be extracted by querying across all taxa, places, dates latitude and longitude, bounding box, elevation and collection name. The data can also be exported, explored and queried from links within a collection or taxa record. SCAR is an associate member of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and encourages the publication of data into this global initiative. The AADC has the capacity to publish data to GBIF from other Antarctic Programs for those that do not wish to do it themselves. Current plans include the improvement of the on-line mapping tools and to utilise the Antarctic Digital Database, for background topography. The recent Environmental Domains of Antarctica report is proposed as a frame work for analysis of the biological data.