Heading the Catalogue of Life

Dr David Penman has been elected chair of the governing board of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an international organization working to develop the world’s first free mega-database of all living organisms. The internet resource, which will help individuals and governments research areas as diverse as climate change, border control, and species stability, is expected to be online by February 2006. “I’ve always tried to defend the role of the small and ugly, or the underdogs which make the soils function, provide the nutrient flow and the natural biological controls,” says Penman, an entomologist and research manager for Landcare Research, in Stuff : “The Department of Conservation will pour a lot of money into a single species like the kakapo, but to have effect, you’ve got to have the ecosystem function so the rimu trees flower. It’s a whole system.”