FrogWatch Canada becomes latest node in North American Species Analyst Project

The frog call phenology data being collected by hundreds of observers across Canada are now the newest addition to the North American Species Analyst project (http://www.speciesanalyst.net). FrogwWatch Canada (http://www.frogwatch.ca/ and http://www.attentiongrenouilles.ca) is a partnership among Environment Canada, the Canadian Nature Federation, and both existing and newly-formed provincial frog monitoring programs. The database behind this national initiative is distributed and shared by the partners. This new Species Analyst data node is the first observation-based database to be included. Other major repositories in Species Analyst stem from museum, university, and government collections. Species Analyst is a research project, developed by the University of Kansas and endorsed by both the Northern American Biodiversity Information Network (NABIN, http://www.cec.org) and the Biota of Canada Information Network (BCIN) project. In summary, it offers an Internet-based resource discovery tool allowing users to query simultaneously very large distributed biodiversity databases. Through the Species Analyst, users are able to link with other types of data, including: genomic, taxonomic and bibliographic using the North American Integrated Taxonomic Information System (http://res.agr.ca/itis/) which allows for taxonomic searching using both scientific and common names. Users are also able to download data in various formats for use with GIS software or analyze the data using an algorithm called Genetic Algorithm for Rule-setting Process. Participation in Species Analyst means far more than making data collected through EMAN programs available to others: it allows EMAN CO and EMAN partners to examine and compare extensive data from right across North America in developing information on the status and trends of species distributions.

For more information, contact: EMAN Coordinating Office, phone: (905) 336-4414, fax: (905) 336-4499, email: eman@ec.gc.ca