BioNames: linking taxonomy, texts, and trees

BioNames is a web database of taxonomic names for animals, linked to the primary literature and, wherever possible, to phylogenetic trees. It aims to provide a taxonomic “dashboard” where at a glance we can see a summary of the taxonomic and phylogenetic information we have for a given taxon and hence provide a quick answer to the basic question “what is this taxon?” BioNames combines classifications from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and GenBank, images from the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), animal names from the Index of Organism Names (ION), and bibliographic data from multiple sources including the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and CrossRef. The user interface includes display of full text articles, interactive timelines of taxonomic publications, and zoomable phylogenies. It is available at http://bionames.org.