title: Biodiversity analysis in the digital era.
abstract: This paper explores what the virtual biodiversity e-infrastructure will look like as it takes advantage of advances in 'Big Data' biodiversity informatics and e-research infrastructure, which allow integration of various taxon-level data types (genome, morphology, distribution and species interactions) within a phylogenetic and environmental framework. By overcoming the data scaling problem in ecology, this integrative framework will provide richer information and fast learning to enable a deeper understanding of biodiversity evolution and dynamics in a rapidly changing world. The Atlas of Living Australia is used as one example of the advantages of progressing towards this future. Living in this future will require the adoption of new ways of integrating scientific knowledge into societal decision making.This article is part of the themed issue 'From DNA barcodes to biomes'.
authors.affiliation: Atlas of Living Australia, CSIRO National Research Collections Australia, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia john.lasalle@csiro.au.
authors.forename: John
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8816-9569
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: La Salle
authors.affiliation: Land and Water, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), GPO Box 1600, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Kristen J
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7324-5880
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biodiversity Analysis and Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Acton ACT 2601, Australia.
authors.forename: Craig
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5313-7279
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Moritz
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D044822:Biodiversity; D002965:Classification / Q000379:methods*; D019295:Computational Biology; D058893:DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic; D010802:Phylogeny
keywords: biodiversity informatics; biogeography; e-research infrastructure; environment; evolution