KU Symbiota leads a new project to mobilize biodiversity collections in Central America
Lawrence — The Symbiota division at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum is partnering with nine institutions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica on a new initiative to mobilize biodiversity collections in Central America.
The project, “Increasing Open Biodiversity Information in Central America Through a Network of Digitized Scientific Collections,” will sponsor a new Symbiota portal and provide personalized training for local researchers to expand capacity for the mobilization of biodiversity information in the region. Symbiota is an open-source biodiversity data aggregation and collection management system software that sustains over 60 publicly accessible data portals.
The project is funded by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the European Union through the Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) program for Latin America and the Caribbean.
This international collaboration, coordinated by Samanta Orellana, postdoctoral researcher in the KU Symbiota and Entomology divisions, aims to mobilize 25 Central American collections and more than 100,000 digital records, including zoological, botanical and paleontological specimens. High-resolution images of specimens deposited in the KU Entomology collection will illustrate insect species included in digital checklists generated during the project.
Symbiota is an active member of the GBIF Network, serving as an Associate Participant affiliated to the North American region. Symbiota portals hosted at KU currently facilitate the mobilization of more than 26 million specimen records to this global platform, shared from 595 collections around the world. Relations between Symbiota and Central American institutions were strengthened through workshops and fieldwork organized in Guatemala and Costa Rica by Orellana in 2025.
An in-person workshop in Costa Rica is planned to bring together KU Symbiota mentors and the project team, including researchers from the University of San Carlos de Guatemala, University of El Salvador, University of Costa Rica, Organization for Tropical Studies, Guatemalan National Forest Institute, GBIF Guatemala and GBIF Costa Rica.