About

ProtistCentral is currently under development by the lab of Edward Theriot and his students and collaborators.

At the moment its primary purpose is to serve as a central repository for images and observations related to the lab's research and teaching efforts, such as Theriot's Natural History of the Protists course and for photo vouchers for DNA and experimental work performed in the Theriot Lab. It is also used by our collaborators on other projects. If you have an interest in contributing images or information please contact Ed Theriot at etheriot at austin dot utexas dot edu. There are, of course, other sites you should consider for contribution of protistan data and images, especially the terrific Micro*Scope at http://starcentral.mbl.edu/microscope/portal.php.

Most of the observations and photos are of specimens observed from wild samples in Texas. Some are from cultures we use in our work on molecular systematics of heterokont algae, especially diatoms. We also came to realize how little is known about Texas protists, and so adding content about Texas protists is also a major agenda. Thus, we would be particularly happy to add contributions of Texas protists, freshwater or marine, if you have an interest in making such a contribution.

Because the project was conceived mainly as a convenient way to share the photo vouchers from our molecular systematic research, we chose the NCBI (Genbank) phylogenetic tree as a basis for classification, and for entry and retrieval of data. We did so for convenience of reference of images for our systematic research and not because we believe the NCBI tree to be the best tree. Theriot's lab is also contributing to the diatom names project for the Encyclopedia of Life. Ultimately we plan to incorporate that and other classification systems as access points to the information in ProtistCentral.

Why is this website being developed instead of simply utilizing other great protist websites, such as the very fine Micro*Scope or AlgaeBase? This has to do with the fact that Theriot's lab is also part of the Texas Natural Science Center, which has extensive collections and research programs on fish, herps, arthropods, and paleontology (see www.texasmemorialmuseum.org for more details).

The site also shares programming and database structure with www.OdonataCentral.org, another project of the Texas Natural Science Center. The TNSC is developing other "TexasCentral" websites, particularly for fishes and herp. It also works with local biodiversity organizations to promote local awareness of biological diversity (all the way down to protists - not just brown-eyed fuzzy things or things with feathers!), by creating integrated tools that promote "Citizen Science" as well as support serious basic scientific research.

As such, ProtistCentral is not a "standalone" tool for protistology. It is part of a larger vision of how a natural history museum can connect science with the public and get it engaged in regional biological diversity issues. Thus our emphasis is on mapping capability, ease of data entry, and a regional focus.

Our traditional permanent collection catalogues are interoperable internationally on a discipline level. Our fish catalogue can "talk to" other fish catalogues at other museums. Ditto for herpetological collections. But our fish catalogue doesn't talk to our herp catalogue. If you are a teacher in Austin, you have to go to 2 sources here at UT to find listing of fish and herps from Travis County. Our "TexasCentral" concept aims to integrate those sources of information.

ProtistCentral has been developed with a great deal of institutional experience in intradiscipline interoperability. As community standards arise and evolve for managing protist data and images, we inted to evolve ProtistCentral so that it can become part of the larger internet resource.

Several Theriot Lab projects on this site were supported by National Science Foundation grant 0629410 to E.C. Theriot and R.K. Jansen. Results illustrated here do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the National Science Foundation.

These projects and the Protist Central site in general are also supported by the Texas Natural Science Center and the Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professorship in Molecular Evolution.