DEVELOPMENT OF AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM ON ANTARCTIC BENTHOS AND BIRDS ECOLOGY (ECOANT) ON THE BASIS OF AN ELECTRONIC COLLECTION OF INVERTABRATES, FISHES AND BIRDS

I.S.Smirnov, A.L.Lobanov, M.B.Dianov, A.A.Golikov, A.F.Alimov, A.V.Neelov, M.V.Gavrilo*
Zoological Institute of RAS, *AARI
199034, St.-Petersburg, Universitetskaja nab., 1; (smiris@zin.ru)

Zoological Institute of RAS participates in south-pole biota research since 1955.
Despite a wanton growth of information technologies biological and zoological researches in particular are slowly standardized and computerized due to the complexity of systematic and nomenclature relations.  Developers of IRS “ECOANT” proposed an original method to present zoological hierarchical classification in a relational DB. The formation of IRS of such a scale for the Antarctic benthos will be unique because the most extensive and unique collections of marine invertebrates and fishes collected in Zoological institute during 50 years of investigations will serve as a data source.
The development of databases structure and modeling of IRS “ECOANT” on ecology of Antarctic Region benthos were started with the support of 15th project of "Investigation and research of Antarctic Region" subproject of FAP "The World ocean" and RFBR grant N 99-07-90315. The preliminary information on IRS “ECOANT” development can be found on the site of Zoological institute of RAS: http://www.zin.ru/projects/ecoant/index.html .
The development of electronic collections stimulates the appearance of virtual zoological museums, which should be a complex information systems containing various data: history of collections; establishers, preparators, collectors, curators of collections; and other useful information.