Biodiversity information goes public: GBIF at your service

Abstract To the benefit of taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, conservationists and the interested general public community GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) now offers more than 280 million records from biological and geological collections and observation data bases worldwide. Taxonomic revisions, phylogenetic analyses, large scale ecological modelling, and decisionmaking in conservation and planning issues are simplified and may be based on better background knowledge than ever before using the central GBIF portal at http://www.gbif.org/ or regional portals hosted by the different GBIF‐nodes.