What is an ATBI?

All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories (ATBI) are intensive community efforts to identify and record all living species that exist within a given area. These kinds of campaigns allow taxonomists specialized on the study of a particular group of organisms to connect with their colleagues to a more general view of the living world.

An ATBI not only compiles lists of species, but also collects information on habitat, distribution, time and date of occurrences of the observed species, as well as abundance and biology. Despite the fact that the European Union aims at a total halt of biodiversity loss by 2010 (www.countdown2010.net), our knowledge on biodiversity is very limited, even in European habitats.

Thus, “All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories” are very important for our knowledge about and the protection of Europe’s biodiversity. The 'European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy' (EDIT) stimulates All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories in the Alpi Marittime and Mercantour nature reserves to apply the science of Taxonomy to the conservation of biodiversity.

Together with the Park’s management boards, EDIT coordinates activities from scientists from over 27 mainly EU-based, scientific institutions that thus cooperate to work together on a 'baseline biodiversity assessment' (www.atbi.eu) of the two parks. Results of EDIT's ATBIs will be published on this website. For more information on All Taxa Biodiversity Inventories and on EDIT’s activities elsewhere in Europe and the World, please visit www.atbi.eu.