Integrated Taxonomic Information System

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System ( ITIS) is a 1996 -initiated, shared project of various North American organizations to standardize and provide taxonomic information as the basis of ecosystem management as well as measures for the conservation of biodiversity. The aim is to provide a publicly accessible database with reliable data for the names of the taxa and their hierarchical classification. Covered here are plants, animals, fungi and microbes. Each taxonomic identifier is identified by a Taxonomic Serial Number ( TSN), a unique fixed numerical keys. In December 2011, the database contained 548 014 entries.

Partner Projects by ITIS are Species 2000 and GBIF. The taxonomic data from ITIS and Species 2000, which are combined in the Catalogue of Life, serve as the basis of the Encyclopedia of Life, an online encyclopedia for the creatures of the world.

Participating organizations

Base at the start of the project in 1996 was the database of the National Oceanographic Data Center ( NODC ), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA). This is also referred to as the NODC Taxonomic Code database contained 210,000 scientific names, the data quality was mixed. Originally the name for ITIS Taxonomic was Interagency Information System. Initially, U.S. organizations were exclusively involved:

  • Ministry of Commerce of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA)
  • United States Geological Survey (USGS )

Later, other organizations were added, including a kandanische and a Mexican:

  • Canada Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada
  • Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad ( CONABIO )
  • National Biological Information Infrastructure
  • National Park Service
  • NatureServe
  • United States Fish and Wildlife Service

Taxonomic Serial Number

In the Taxonomic Serial Number ( TSN ) is in a unique, permanently valid, numeric keys. The scientific name of the species Homo sapiens, for example, the TSN 180092 assigned. The TSN is deliberately not speaking key, which means in particular that the numerical values ​​of the TSN allow any conclusions on the systematic relationships of the taxa. So that no change of the TSN is required when a taxon is assigned differently so long as no change in the scientific name is associated.

A TSN identifies the combination of a scientific name and the associated taxon. This means, firstly, that in every sense of homonyms a separate TSN is assigned .. On the other hand it means that in the case of synonyms also different TSN will be awarded.

According to the order of recording the scientific names in the database, the TSN are awarded sequentially. In this case, all ranks are recognized until the kingdom. For common names there are, however, no own TSN, the data set to a TSN but can Trivial names are assigned to allow a search for that.

The spelling of a scientific name remains permanently unchanged. This rule was broken in the early days, however, because of write errors have been corrected in the policies adopted by the previous system NDOC Taxonimic code data.

Data model

Each TSN, so any combination of scientific names and taxon is associated with a different TSN. This assignment has exactly to one of the following meanings:

A rare exception to this rule is when there is no equivalent synonym for an invalid name by which this could be linked directly. In this case a TSN are also associated with several others.

Each record is assigned three attributes that document the data quality:

  • Record Credibility Rating: This returns whether and to what extent the entry is checked.
  • Latest Record Review: For ranks from the genus and higher here the year of the last reviews of the entry is given.
  • Global Species Completeness: Also from the genus expresses this flag if all this taxon subordinate species are included in the database.
Hierarchy Global Biodiversity Information Facility United States Environmental Protection Agency
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