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In Europe various scientific institutes have produced partial taxonomic overviews and a few countries have worked on national biodiversity information systems. However, up to March 2001 (when the Fauna Europaea project was initiated) there was no complete European taxonomic database even if the need for such a database had not only long been felt but had increased with time.

Fauna Europaea (FaEu) was funded by the European Union through its 5th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Within the framework of the European Union’s Biodiversity Strategy, the aim of FaEu was to produce a central database with a unique comprehensive list of valid accepted scientific names of the terrestrial and freshwater multicellular animal species that currently live in Europe, and information about their distribution at least at a European country level.

The project was officially over on 31st October 2004 and the first version of the database, with browsing and search facilities, is now available on the web.  The database may be accessed through the web pages of the FaEu project (http://www.faunaeur.org/about_fauna_intro.php). Links to additional data, in particular other related European biodiversity services and taxonomic registers, are available. The database also includes information with respect to the present state of understanding of the European non-marine fauna by indicating gaps in knowledge and expertise in Europe.

The FaEu geographical system includes the European mainland, the Macaronesian islands (excluding Cape Verde Is.), Malta, Cyprus, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, the Western Kazakhstan excluded (Fig.1).

Figure 1. Geographical area covered by the Fauna Europaea project

 

This informatics infrastructure is designed to allow continuous updating and should serve as a unique reference database for many users in science, government, industry, conservation, and education. Fauna Europaea is envisaged to play a major role in supplying taxonomic biodiversity data that is much required to assist the assessment, sustainable exploitation and management of biodiversity, and the monitoring of biodiversity change.

Fauna Europaea is coordinated by the Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam, assisted by the Zoological Museum of the University of Copenhagen and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris (Table 1).  The organisation has been retained to continue updating and developing the website beyond the official end of the project.  To this end, further funds are being searched for to support the maintenance of the database.

Table 1: The role of the three main institutions

For each animal group one or more taxonomic specialists are involved in providing taxonomic expertise and information. The taxonomic and distributional data is passed on to group coordinators, who have the responsibility of keeping contact with the large number of experts throughout Europe that are involved (about 400). Every taxonomic group is covered by at least one group coordinator. Group coordinators are responsible for the integrated input of both taxonomic and distributional data. Finally, the group coordinators forward the information gathered to the Taxonomic Coordinator at the Zoological Museum of Copenhagen. The latter has the complicated task of collating the data for Fauna Europaea and merging it into integrated datasets.

The datasets are validated by the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. The data is cross-checked and reviewed with existing national, regional and local lists and literature. Validation workshops are held to discover the more obscure information sources and highlight the identification of gaps in information and expertise.

Initially, only the countries that were members of the European Union were involved in the project.  In the initial part of the Fauna Europaea project however, it was concluded that a stronger involvement of institutes and experts from Eastern Europe was desirable.  In the autumn of 2001, a call from the European Commission was published, which asked for proposals from ongoing projects to extend themselves to the then so-called NAS countries (Newly Associated States, and later known as the candidate and accession countries).  In February 2002 a Fauna Europaea proposal for such an extension was submitted to the EU. This proposal was accepted and in late 2002, the following countries joined the project (all the candidate and accession countries, except Cyprus):

The scope of the extension was to find partner institutes (and experts in these institutes) that might contribute to the following tasks:

1. To supply faunistic data on their countries and to support the validation process (checking European checklists with national lists)
2. To contribute to data management and data mining
3. To organise workshops and conferences

The Faunistics and Ecology of the Maltese Islands (FEMI) research group at the Department of Biology of the University of Malta is collaborating in the FaEu project by collecting relevant data pertaining to databases and other information sources on the local non-marine fauna. In parallel, FEMI seeks to collaborate in this endeavour with all other local institutions and/or persons who have an interest in the cataloguing of local biodiversity, within the parameters of the FaEu project and its extension to the candidate and accession countries.

The results of the FaEu project were intended to serve the expanded European Union at a wide level. For this reason, priority setting, product presentation and dissemination plans were discussed with potential end-users of the database. This was done at meetings (forums) with representative end-users, during which the end-user forum made recommendations concerning priority setting and the final data presentation, including linkages to other databases. Two such forums for end-users in EU member states were held up to June 2001. During these meetings, the desired format for the website was discussed following a questionnaire that had been disseminated within the EU member states.

When the project was extended to the Newly Associated States in 2002, it was found necessary to identify the expectations or specific requirements of these NAS countries (including Malta) for the final FaEu product.

As part of this work, FEMI was asked to disseminate a questionnaire to potential end-users in Malta and the other NAS countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). This questionnaire was aimed at identifying the end-user requirements for NAS countries in order that the final FaEu product is adapted also for the needs of NAS users. After the collation and analysis of the questionnaire, a third meeting was held in March 2003 in Malta to assess the NAS end-user needs.

From the initiation of the project, one of the objectives was to set up national networks of taxonomists. The Fauna Europaea Country Networks are meant for taxonomists who accept to participate on an entirely voluntary basis in the project by providing faunistic and taxonomic data at the request of the designated taxonomists who are actually responsible for putting the database together. After setting up the country network, the names of the experts are distributed to the FaEu network such that interested members of the European network may contact them.

FEMI has been asked to set up such a network of Maltese taxonomists. However, Malta is a special case in that there are very few professional taxonomists. Nonetheless, there are a number of ‘parataxonomists’ who, although not taxonomists, have an in-depth knowledge of particular taxonomic groups about which they are able to provide faunistic information if not taxonomic data. Thus, the Malta Network includes both taxonomists and 'parataxonomists'.

The role of the members within the Maltese network (FaEu-Malta Network) is to point out omissions, errors and ambiguities, to respond to queries about their particular group, and to supply any useful information on a voluntary basis.  The members of the network have already participated in validating the taxonomic data for the Maltese Islands that has been incorporated in the first version of the database.  Members of the FaEu-Malta Network are validating new data that is being collected by FaEu specialist taxonomists so as to ensure that the database will continue to be actively updated with the most recently available and correct information.