The Natural History Information System (www.nkis.info) is a citizen-science project that collects information on all kind of organisms worldwide. Registered users can submit data online to distribution, phenology, activity, biotopes, species interactions and many others, whereas anybody can analyze these data with the aid of standardized analysis tools (mainly maps and diagrams). Registered users also can write taxonomical descriptions and upload photos, which may be expanded to scientific articles reviewed by specialists. All information is published under a “creative commons-license” and is freely accessible.
The NKIS data pool currently contains more than 360,000 records of nearly 18,000 taxa, mainly on butterflies and moths and mainly from Europe. They provide more than 30,000 species pages in german and more than 2000 in english with thousands of photos. The organization also issues two scientific online-journals, the “Mitteilungen der Naturkundlichen Gesellschaft” (= Notes of the Natural History Society, mainly for faunistic and floristic articles) and “Taxonomy Online”, a journal for taxonomic articles, including descriptions of new species (see: http://www.nkis.info/taxon).
