California Academy of Sciences has used Google Earth for a biodiversity project on ants, Antweb.


Brian L. Fisher, Associate Curator of Entomology, California Academy of Sciences has reported in Google Blog that the California Academy of Sciences has incorporated the Google Earth interface for a biodiversity project on Ants.

According to the report “digitizing biodiversity information is a final frontier for IT. It’s an essential step to ensure society maintains and hopefully increases bio-literacy”.

California Academy of Sciences has incorporated the Google Earth interface to provide location-based access to the diversity and wonder of ants and has created the Antweb.

The California Academy of sciences has reported in its Press Release “It used to take scientists months, sometimes even years, to identify new ant species, since field guides are scarce and original species descriptions are often buried in obscure journals. But now, California Academy of Sciences entomologist Dr. Brian Fisher is putting ant identification on the fast track with the help of new technology from Google Earth.

Fisher, the Chairman of the Academy’s Entomology Department, has assembled data and descriptions for thousands of species of ants from around the world and posted the information to a public Web site, www.antweb.org.

From the Antweb site, scientists and ant aficionados alike can download the Google Earth program and plot all of the ants known to Antweb on a three dimensional, interactive globe of satellite images”.

To download Google Earth click here.

To learn more about putting Antweb in Google Earth click here.

 

 

 

 

 

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