Virtual Museum
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The Virtual Museum is a database system and corresponding web front-end. It is a research tool with the following main objectives:
- to provide a platform for citizen scientists to contribute to science-driven biodiversity projects; submitted records are identified and vetted online by a panel of experts
- to serve as a repository for the long term curation of distributional data sets
- to provide open access to distributional data in the form of maps and lists; and
- to provide a platform to carry out the conservation assessment of any taxa according to IUCN guidelines and criteria as the VM includes an independent implementation of IUCN's Species Information Service database. This is a key component since allows experts widely dispersed geographically to collaborate in the conservation assessment of a given taxa; it greatly simplifies the logistics of coordinating the assessment of hundreds of species and scores of authors, evaluators and editors, all in a centralized database that provides the most up-to-date distributional data available for the taxa under review.
The Virtual Museum has been used as the platform for the conservation assessment of reptiles (project completed), butterflies (project completed), and birds (ongoing).
Currently the Virtual Museum hosts the following projects:
- BirdPix (repository of bird pictures)
- BOP (odd plumages of birds)
- EchinoMAP (sea stars, sea urchins and brittle stars)
- FrogMAP (frogs)
- LepiMAP (moth & butterflies)
- MammalMAP (mammals of Africa)
- OdonataMAP (dragonflies and damselflies)
- PHOWN (weaver nests), ReptileMAP (reptiles)
- RDBB (red-data book of birds, a conservation assessment only project)
- ScorpionMAP (scorpions)
- SpiderMAP (spiders)
- ViTH (trees)
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The FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology aims to "To promote and undertake scientific studies involving birds, and contribute to the practice affecting the maintenance of biological diversity and the sustained use of biological resources."
The University of Cape Town is known for its academic excellence and pioneering scholarship. Through a culture of teaching and learning, UCT strives to turn out graduates who are engaged citizens, able and willing to apply their expertise across the African continent.
