This fork of the Symbiota code is actively being developed by the Biodiversity Knowledge Integration Center (BioKIC, https://github.com/BioKIC) development team at Arizona State University. Even though BioKIC code developments are regularly pushed back to this repository, we recommend that you download/fork code directly from the BioKIC/Symbiota repository (https://github.com/BioKIC/Symbiota) to ensure that you obtain the most recently code changes.

The Symbiota Software Project is building a library of webtools to aid biologists in establishing specimen based virtual floras and faunas. This project developed from the realization that complex, information rich biodiversity portals are best built through collaborative efforts between software developers, biologist, wildlife managers, and citizen scientist. The central premise of this open source software project is that through a partnership between software engineers and the scientific community, higher quality and more publicly useful biodiversity portals can be built. An open source software framework allows the technicians to create the tools, thus freeing the biologist to concentrate their efforts on the curation of quality datasets. In this manner, we can create something far greater than a single entity is capable of doing on their own.

More information about this project can be accessed through https://symbiota.org.

For documentation and user guides please visit Symbiota Docs.

Symbiota has been generously funded by the National Science Foundation (DBI-0743827) from 15 July 2008 to 30 June 2011 (Estimated). The Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) at Arizona State University has also been a major supporters of the Symbiota initiative since the very beginning. Arizona State University Vascular Plant and Lichen Herbarium have been intricately involved in the development from the start. Sky Island Alliance and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum have both been long-term participants in the development of this product.

• Specimen Search Engine
  • Taxonomic Thesaurus for querying taxonomic synonyms
  • Google Map and Google Earth mapping capabilities
  • Dynamic species list generated from specimens records
• Flora/Fauna Management System
  • Static species list (local floras/faunas)
• Interactive Identification Keys
  • Key generation for are species list within system
  • Key generator based on a point locality
• Image Library

• Tested thoroughly on Linux and Windows operating systems
• Code should work with an PHP enabled web server, though central development and testing done using Apache HTTP Server

Please read the INSTALL.md file for installation instructions.

Please read the UPDATE.md file for instructions on how to update Symbiota.