This paper provides an overview of efforts to create an informatics infrastructure for the biodiversity community. A vast amount of biodiversity information exists, but no comprehensive infrastructure is in place to provide easy assess and effective use of this information. The advent of modern information technologies provides a foundation for a remedy. Biodiversity informatics infrastructures...

Biologists seek an understanding of the biological and environmental factors determining local community diversity. Recent advances in metacommunity ecology, and neutral theory in particular, highlight the importance of dispersal processes interacting with the spatial structure of a landscape for generating spatial patterns and maintaining biodiversity. The relative spatial isolation of a commu...