Universal Chalcidoidea Database curated in TaxonWorks
Citation
The Catalogue of Life Partnership: Universal Chalcidoidea Database curated in TaxonWorksDescription
The Universal Chalcidoidea Database (UCD) was first released as a CD-ROM in 1999, and it was first made available online in its previous version at the Natural History Museum website in 2002. As of today, the UCD contains 27968 valid species (including some subspecies) and 2295 valid genera (including some subgenera). It also includes a comprehensive list of the various generic combinations and misspellings that have been used in the literature. In all nearly 50,000 different combinations and spellings are recorded. All names are supported by a citation of the published source from where they were obtained as are all taxonomic and nomenclatural acts noted within the database. Also included are over 120,000 host/associate records (including associations with food plants of the hosts) and more than 140,000 distribution records. The latter can be used to provide regional lists of Chalcidoidea. The UCD has its roots in a taxonomic card catalog compiled and maintained until about 1969 by the "indexing section" of the Department of Entomology at The Natural History Museum, London. Soon after joining the staff of the department John Noyes undertook to update and improve on this catalog and add a comprehensive bibliography of works on the superfamily. The conversion of the card catalog into an electronic database was started in August 1991. It was made publically available through the UCD website by the Natural History Museum, London, with the last data update in 2019. The database was transferred to a new platform available in TaxonWorks, which provides the API used to build this site. The new UCD curator platform has been enhanced and is now updated by multiple individuals from a number of different institutions worldwide. This public interface exposes the data using an API that assembles updated information from the curator platform. John Noyes was responsible for the enormous task of developing and curating the UCD up to 2019. For this we have only great admiration and thanks. A new curatorial group is now responsible for updating the database since 2019. List of Active Curators: Roger Burks (site designer) Newport Beach, CA, USA; Lucian Fusu, Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi, Romania; D. Christopher Darling, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada; John Heraty, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA; Petr Janšta, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic; Mircea-Dan Mitroiu, Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi, Romania; Pâmella Machado Saguiah, Ciências Biológicas pela Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil; Natalie Dale-Skey, The Museum of Natural History, London, United Kingdom; James B. Woolley, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA TaxonWorks Development and Outreach Team: Matt Yoder, Dmitry Dmitriev, José Luis Pereira, Hernán Lucas Pereira, Deborah Paul. UCD content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Funding by the Tate & Lyle PLC, Unilever, National Science Foundation Grant DEB-1555808, and a grant from the USDA Systematic Entomology Laboratory.Taxonomic Coverages
Chalcidoid wasps
Geographic Coverages
Global
Bibliographic Citations
Contacts
UCD Communityeditor
James Woolley
administrative point of contact
email: jimwoolley@tamu.edu