ENTOMOLOGICAL DATABASES: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN DATA MANAGEMENT AND RETRIEVAL

Luke Melita, Gopinath Ganapathy, Kaliyaperumal Karunamoorthi, Sebsibe Hailemariam

Abstract


Documenting and preserving the entomological data is an important aspect in the fight against insect-transmitted diseases in terms of public health and agriculture concern and it is also helpful in formulating the life-saving novel chemotherapeutic as well as immunotherapeutic agents. The objective of this scrutiny is to assess the existing entomological databases and to identify the major challenges and future perspectives in terms of effective information retrieval.  To pursue with the study, a detailed search on Google and American Online Search engines has been carried out with the key words “Entomology”, “Entomology Databases”, “Entomology Collections”, “Insects”, “Insect Collection” and “Insect Database”, in differing orders, in order to extract websites or databases, containing information on Entomology and entomological databases. In this scrutiny among the output of first 253 web-links, 67 appropriate websites/databases were selected for further analysis. From the observed data, several important inferences are made such that effective counter-measures can be taken-in-part. A data input standard for framing an ideal database management system and some methods for retrieving entomological data effectively through different kinds of interfaces based on ontologies, common framework or meta-search have been suggested. The findings recommend for renewed interest and support in establishing entomological databases in the resource-constrained settings with efficient platforms for distributed retrieval of information.

Keywords


Entomological databases, Biological Databases, Integration, Information Retrieval

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References


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