Stratigraphic distribution of brachiopods - a new method for storing and querying loosely-structured biodiversity information

Analysing the stratigraphic distribution of the genera described in the new brachiopod Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology requires as a minimum the extraction of taxonomic information (genus name, together with its assigned Family, Superfamily, Order, etc.) and stratigraphic range data (first occurrence and last occurrence). Manual extraction of such information is time-consuming and prone to the introduction of errors, and much more meaningful analyses would be possible if the entire spectrum of data in the Treatise could be extracted (for example the morphology and geographic information). However the rigorous, standardised method of describing genera in the Treatise has provided a rapid and reliable method of extracting the required data using new advances in computing science. Scanning across such text, a computer can detect and tag repeating motifs in standardised form, such as the name of the genus and its stratigraphic range. These XML (Extensible Markup Language) tags allow the entire data from the Treatise to be displayed hierarchically in programs such as Internet Explorer 5 (a WWW browser). The hierarchical nature of the XML displays genera in their Families, Families in their Superfamilies, etc., thereby providing access to the taxonomic and stratigraphic information needed. The advantages of this method are that it is extremely fast, retains all the original information as presented in the Treatise, and presents the information in a format that is convenient for the user