Objective

This site aims ultimately to provide an extensive guide to Radiolarian taxonomy. It will consist of two parts - a catalog of all described species and a parallel database with detailed information on accepted taxa.

Content at present (Nov 2019)

1. Catalog - this contains basic taxonomic references to ca 7,500 polycystine radiolarian taxa (6500 species, 1000 genera and above) described from the Cenozoic. It includes type images from the Suzuki database and descriptions from the Caulet database. Taxa are listed alphabetically under the name used in the publication they were described in.
2. Main database - this is currently simply a listing of ca 2,500 radiolarian taxa (1,500 species, 1000 genera and above) used in DSDP and ODP reports as compiled for the Neptune database and considered valid on a basic taxonomic review (including elimination of many synonyms), as summarised in Lazarus et al. (2015). The taxa are organised by conventional families and then by new fimies as developed by Suzuki and co-workers. These taxa are linked to the catalog entries. This thus at present essentially provides an alternative way of browsing the content but it is intended to provide additional images, discussion of taxa, generic diagnoses etc.
   Linkage to the Neptune database allows display of occurrence data from the database, including occurrence frequency plots on each page and links to tools to plot occurrences on palaeobiogeographic maps and to see occurrence tables for individual sites.

People involved and data sources

Development of the site is being lead by David Lazarus (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin). Data on the site is ultimately derived from the literature and so from the works of generations of plankton biologists and micropalaeontologists, from Ehrenberg to the present day. More recently this taxonomic data has been compiled and synthesised in several very large databasing projects, as outlined below. Here we are combining data and images on Cenozoic and living radiolaria from these systems and presenting it using a web content management system - mikrotax. The Mikrotax system was developed by Jeremy Young (University College London) who is assisting with data migration and database customisation. Data sources:

• The RadWorld database was created by, Jean-Pierre Caulet (Charavines, France) as a synthesis of radiolarian taxonomy, using MS-Access including records of >12,000 taxa, including notably original descriptions of taxa.
• The software PaleoTax was used by Noritoshi Suzuki (Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Tohoku University) to compile a comprehensive database of radiolarian taxa with entries for ca 18,000 taxa, and including a collection of 13,000 type figures.
• The InterRad Digital Library is a bibliographic database and PDF reprint collection compiled by Luis O'Dogherty (Unversidad de Cadiz), Jonathan Aitchinson (University of Sydney) and Noritoshi Suzuki (Tohoku University). This consists of an EndNote biblography of 7,200 references and a collection 5,200 pdfs. This bibliography has not yet been incorporated in the mikrotax system but the PDF collection has been extensively used as a reference source.
• The Neptune database holds occurrence data from scientific ocean drilling (DSDP, ODP and IODP). This database was compiled by David Lazarus and co-workers over >25 years and includes data on 11,000 radiolarian samples and a total of 135,000 species occurrence records. Plots of the occurrence frequency of taxa through the Cenozoic produced from the Neptune database are provided here on every taxon page. In addition tools are provided here to allow plotting of data from multiple species, plots of biogeographic distributions and reconstruction of distribution tables for single drilling sites (see the Tools menu).
• Lazarus et al. (2015) provided a provisional species list and classification of Cenozoic radiolaria, derived from the Neptune database and from the namelist verification efforts of the group of authors. This list forms the basis of the species listing used here on the Cenozic Radiolaria main database.
• The Riedel reprint collection - Bill Riedel collected probably the world's largest library of radiolarian literature, including very strong coverage of literature from the Soviet Union, with translations. The reprint collection has since migrated from La Jolla to London (UCL and the NHM) and then to Berlin (NHM). Scans of the reprints are a core part of the InterRad Digital library and the collection is a major asset for the project.
• Radiolaria.org has been a pioneering web-taxonomy site and although it is no longer being actively developed a significant amount of content is on the site. It is intended to migrate this content - especially images - onto radiolaria@mikrotax.

We believe that by synthesising data from these sources we will be able to build a single, universally accessible, database with a very large amount of useful reference data on radiolarian taxonomy. This will also provide a platform to incorporate modern images and document current species concepts. This has already been achieved for coccolithophores and planktonic foraminifera, reaching a similar level of coverage for radiolaria will be long-term project but will be achievable especially if a range of workers contribute to the project. Our current aim is to integrate a large body of content into a prototype website in time for the 2020 InterRad conference in Slovenia.