Integrated Digitized Biocollections
Making data and images of millions of biological specimens available on the web.
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Announcing the Biodiversity Chatbot (new!)
Members of the biocollections community are invited to explore a new conversational interface to access information related to biological collections. This prototype service is under development and expansion by the UF ACIS lab and its collaborators. Currently, it allows users to request and correlate information from records aggregated by iDigBio, records aggregated by GBIF and references to articles indexed by BHL.
Interested users must request a user account at chat.acis.ufl.edu. Being a prototype system, users may experience performance and accuracy glitches which they are welcome to report at chat.acis.ufl.edu. Also welcome are comments on desirable extensions or modifications of the existing system.
Explore Biodiversity Data via Chatbot
Portal Statistics
> 143M
Specimens of animals, plants, fungi, other...
> 57M
Associated image, audio, and video files
> 1.8K
Data from biodiversity collections in the US
Biological Collections
are Invaluable.
Estimates suggest that Natural History museums curate 1 to 2 billion specimens in the US and 3 to 4 billion worldwide. Prior to the advent of digitization and data portals, these collections were siloed, located great distances apart geographically, and difficult to visit. Digitization has resolved lots of these challenges.
The data within these collections, accumulated across space and time, are becoming essential in analyses by ecologists, environmental biologists, in conservation, human health investigations, food security, climate change, the bioeconomy, and many more fields.
Tell Us Why Collections Matter to You
iDigBio Sustainability
iDigBio has been proud to serve the biodiversity collections community and the NSF for the last 13 years. As we enter the last two years of our current grant, we want to understand the community’s needs and the appetite for the biodiversity community, philanthropists, government agences and corporations to sustain our work.
Upcoming Events
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Digital Imaging for Biodiversity Collections
The aim of this free, online Digitization Academy course is to empower participants with the knowledge and skills to (1) identify and describe relevant facets of biodiversity specimens that can be captured and shared with common digital imaging modalities, (2) identify sources of digital imaging protocols and best practices, (3) identify and prioritize major differences among digital image file....
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Symbiota Support Group 2025
The Support Group meets on the first Monday of the month at 12-1p Pacific / 3-4p Eastern. During these meetings, the Hub often demonstrates a predetermined topic, then the session is open for questions, troubleshooting, and discussion. For more information, visit the Symbiota website: https://symbiota.org/symbiota-support-group/
Learn & Participate
About iDigBio
The mission of iDigBio is to promote and catalyze digitization, mobilization, and use of data about biodiversity specimens through training, open data, and innovative uses of these data.
iDigBio was created as the national coordinating center in the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) grant in 2011 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of Florida. Florida State University and the University of Kansas are grant subawardees. iDigBio is a GBIF Other Associate Participant Node.
