Rio Botanical Garden to launch catalog of country's living beings
The Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro will launch the Catalog of Brazilian Life, which will gather data on all species of living beings in the country. Data on microorganisms and fossils, in addition to flora and fauna data already organized, will be made available.
The project to produce the catalog was approved by the Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro, which will provide BRL 1.16 million in two installments. The two new systems for microorganisms and fossils will be developed in partnership with scientists from various research institutions.
Thus, four systems—flora, fauna, microorganisms, and fossils—will be integrated and will have a unified interface for online consultation. The Botanical Garden, where the systems will be hosted and managed, will coordinate the project.
"The Catalog of Life will be a valuable tool for researchers, managers, and society as a whole, in the current global context in which biotechnology advances at a rapid pace, and knowledge of biodiversity also becomes fundamental for the economic development of the country with environmental sustainability, fair distribution of benefits and respect for all forms of life," researcher and coordinator of the project Rafaela Forzza said in a statement.
Brazil has 125,076 species of animals and 50,279 species of plants and fungi (including native, cultivated, and naturalized) known to science. "Obtaining such precise numbers is only possible because the country has two systems where information about the species of its flora, fungi, and fauna are cataloged and made available online to the whole society," according to Rio Botanical Garden.
