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Review Syst. Biol. 46(3):574-575, 1997 Biota: The Biodiversity Database Manager.—Robert K. Colwell. 1996. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Massachusetts, xvi + 574 pp. + software. $125.00. ISBN 0-87893-128-7. "Biodiversity" and "information management" are buzzwords of the 90s, but there has been little intersection of biodiversity concerns and information management. High-level information models exist, such as that developed by a committee of the Association for Systematics Collections (http:/ /www.ascoll.org/data.htrnl), and an information reengineering effort is underway at UC Berkeley (http: / / www.mip.berkeley.edu / mvz / cis.html). In the meantime, systematists, ecologists, and conservation biologists have muddled along without an effective tool for managing precious data. Rob Colwell has crafted Biota, a powerful and easy-to-use information management system that fills that need more than adequately. Biota is a stand-alone application that was developed with 4th Dimension (4D), a high-end relational database system by Acius. The first release of Biota was developed for the Macintosh, but Biota is now available in a Windows version as well. The Biota Web site can be accessed at http:/ /viceroy.eeb.uconn. edu/biota. Biota makes heavy use of the relational capabilities of 4D. There are 12 core tables: Specimen, Collection, Locality, Loans, Personnel, Species, Genus, and five more higher taxonomic categories. The Specimen table is the intersection of a geographic hierarchy and a taxonomic hierarchy. The geographic hierarchy includes Specimen, Collection, and Locality tables, each more inclusive. Thus, there can be many Specimens in one Collection and many Collections from one Locality. The taxonomic hierarchy includes Specimens, Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum, and Kingdom tables. Colwell is aware of current trends in taxonomic theory regarding unranked taxa (de Queiroz and Gauthier, 1990). However, current database development systems offer no efficient way of recursively searching records linked as tree structures, so Biota retains traditional ranks, each corresponding to a table. Additional ranks (cohort, subfamily) are accommodated in a clever way as are temporary determinations, such as when a beetle can only be identified to Chrysomelidae. Junior and senior synonyms in Species records can be tracked. The Determination History (changes in genus or species) of Specimen records is carefully archived. Images in PICT format can be stored in records related to Species records (but not to the Specimen records). I caused a problem by loading an image file from disk that caused the program to jam because insufficient memory was allocated to it. I also caused Biota to crash hard by loading a TIFF image; only PICT images are allowed by 4D. An unlimited number of Notes records can be attached to any record in the Specimens, Species, Collection, Locality, and Loans tables. Data about users can be stored in the Personnel table, and these records can be associated into groups, such as a team of biologists doing an inventory. Longitude and latitude can be stored in several formats. Partial dates can be accommodated. Default values and choice lists can be defined for fields. Barcode entry can be used for certain key fields, such as Specimen identifier. The design of the Loan table and related tables allows both outgoing loans and specimens loaned from another institution to be entered into Biota. The loan system is somewhat limited and seems least suitable for museum use. For example, one cannot add specimens to an existing loan, and after loans are returned there is no record of which specimens had been loaned. These drawbacks could be addressed in future releases. In contrast, other aspects of Biota are more flexible than its information structure suggests (Colwell provides a complete schema in the manual). The Specimen table can be used to track living organisms, as in a life list, or to create species lists for inventory sites. Complex relationships between hosts and commensals can be accommodated to several levels as well. This relationship can be used to track tissue samples or other secondary preparations of a specimen. All menus in Biota are accessible regardless of which table is viewed. Each menu item specifies a task (searching, data entry, printing, etc.) that runs as an independent process, meaning that many tasks (only limited by memory) on different tables can be executed simultaneously. There are few command-key equivalents, a feature I miss. Different selections of records from the same table can be displayed at once in different windows. These selections can be saved and retrieved. Set arithmetic can be performed on selections of records. Searches or sorts of records, including those in related tables, can be executed with generic search and sort editors or by streamlined tools for commonly searched fields. Referential integrity among tables is enforced, with some override allowed to the user, and tools are available to identify childless and parentless records. In the current version, menus and display screens are in English, but the important dialog screens are available in English or Spanish. One of the general disadvantages of a precompiled database is lack of flexibility; once fields are defined they cannot be changed. However, Colwell has provided some ingenious solutions. Fields in the core tables can be renamed using a system of aliases. For the Species, Specimen, Collection, and Locality tables, any 574 1997 575 REVIEW number of auxiliary fields can be defined. These are not true new fields in the table but rather records in special tables that function as cells in a sparse matrix. Auxiliary fields can be used to store and export character data in the NEXUS format used by PAUP and MacClade. Preformatted labels can be printed with data from the Collection, Species, or Specimen tables. They can be used for insect pins, vials, slides, or herbarium specimens. Using 4D's built-in label generator, custom labels can be produced and can include data from related parent tables, but the labels are not stored as records. Biota has a series of preformatted reports, and 4D provides a custom report generator as part of its programming tools. This report generator is functional but is not as intuitive as the rest of Biota; this is a limitation of 4D. If the flexibility of the report generator is not sufficient, the results can be output to a disk file for further manipulation. Data can also be exported in Web-page format, with embedded HTML commands. A password system allows four different access levels to users. Using 4D Server software (available separately), Biota can be run in a true client-server mode using TCP/IP protocol, but the manual suggests that most Internet connections are too slow to make this a viable solution. The newest release of 4D (not presently used for Biota) features a Web server, and future editions of Biota will likely have this capability. The 574 page manual is well written (unlike many commercial manuals), profusely illustrated, and accurately indexed. Of course, I would write some parts of Biota differently. But this is largely a matter of taste, and one can hardly argue with something that works extremely well. Why not just use commercial software and develop your own custom database? I have written herpetology collection databases in both Filemaker Pro and 4D. Filemaker Pro is easy to use and inexpensive but is somewhat limited when compared with 4D. Unless you simply love to program, purchasing Biota will save you a lot of grief. Even with several years experience using 4D, I estimate it would take 10-12 months to duplicate the functions of Biota with my own code. I recommend Biota very highly to database designers and programmers if only to see interesting solutions to common design and implementation problems. More importantly, Biota is an extremely useful and perhaps unparalleled software tool for any biologist who manages biodiversity information. REFERENCES DE QUEIROZ, K., AND J. GAUTHIER. 1990. Phylogeny as a central principle in taxonomy: Phylogenetic definitions of taxon names. Syst. Zool. 39:307-322. David C. Cannatella, Texas Memorial Museum and Department of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, USA.