Darwin Core (often abbreviated to DwC) is a body of data standards which function as an extension of Dublin Core for biodiversity informatics applications, establishing a vocabulary of terms to facilitate the discovery, retrieval, and integration of information about organisms, their spatiotemporal occurrence, and supporting evidence housed in biological collections. It is meant to provide a stable standard reference for sharing information on biological diversity.
By providing a well-defined standard core vocabulary, Darwin Core aims to facilitate data sharing in biodiversity research by minimizing the barriers to adoption and maximizing reusability. The terms described in this standard are a part of a larger set of vocabularies and technical specifications under development and maintained by Biodiversity Information Standards (formerly known as the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG)).
Read more about Darwin Core: Description, History, Key Projects Using Darwin Core, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words darwin and/or core:
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,
They are no wealthier than I;
But with as brave a core within
They rear their boughs to the October sky.
Poor knights they are which bravely wait
The charge of Winter’s cavalry,
Keeping a simple Roman state,
Discumbered of their Persian luxury.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)