Nannotax Enabling nannofossil research

Nannotax is a site being developed to allow online collection of images of nannofossils and commenting on them. It is being developed using the content management system Drupal, as implemented within EDIT (European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy) as a Taxonomy Information System - Scratchpads. The strengths of this system are that diverse information can be uploaded and dynamically linked to individual taxa (i.e. it can grow organically) and that the commenting system allows users to readily share their own observations.

Current status of site: The site is being developed for Neogene nanofossils in the first place. The taxonomy from Young (1998) has been implemented and draft
taxon descrpitions input. A few test images uploaded into galleries -
but linkage to descritions is still a bit rudimentary

Participation. Please do browse the site and request a user account - these need to be approved so there will probably be a delay before I read the email asking for my approval. When registered you will be free to add comments, edit content etc.

Conventions in descriptions. Typically the following fields are used:

Citation: The full ICBN citation for the taxon including decribing and combining authour, followed where appropriate by original generic assignment of the species in [square brackets].

Description: brief description of species.

Remarks: additional notes on afitnties, abundance, ecology etc. 

Range: geological range, usually using Martini (1971) zonation

Synonyms & Variants: The two categories are in some respects subjective. Names are listed as synonyms when they are used as alternatives to the accepted name, most commonly due to two authors having independently described the same taxon. Only synonyms still commonly encountered are included. Names are listed as variants when they are used by some authors to describe particular morphotypes not distinguished here, the notes indicate the difference between them and typical specimens of the species.

Jeremy Young

Reference

Bown P.R. (ed 1998): Calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy. British Micropalaeontological Society Series, Kluwer Academic. ISBN 0-412-78970-1, 328 p.