What is VIDA?

Uniting Vermont's invertebrate data for conservation, science and education

Over a million invertebrate specimens are housed in Vermont collections. Fewer than 10% of these are entered into some form of searchable database or are geo-referenced in some manner. These specimens, and their associated biotic data, provide the raw research material for studies of the composition, identity, distribution, ecology, systematics, and history of Vermont's diversity. They are literally a library of life. But this library lacks a searchable card catalogue. The Vermont Invertebrate Database Alliance (VIDA) was created to help change that.

VIDA, the Spanish word for life, will bring over 100 years of accumulated knowledge of the diversity of Vermont invertebrates into currency for science and conservation.

Comprehensive, collaborative, and ever-growing, VIDA will make all the key information about invertebrate life in Vermont accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Our goals are to:

• Build a cooperative community of professional and amateur scientists interested in understanding and conserving Vermont’s invertebrate species.
  
  
• Facilitate open access to invertebrate data using the internet.
  
  
• Enhance the value of individual collections through cataloging, databases and to join them with other valuable data.
  
  
• Conserve curatorial resources across the state.
  
  
• Foster education about Vermont invertebrates and their conservation by providing the public with the results of knowledge networking of invertebrate biodiversity information.

Explore Vermont Invertebrates

VIDA is uniting Vermont invertebrate records from private and public collections, published literature and in some cases observational records. All of the records will be unified within a distributed information architecture that will be constantly expanding and available to anyone via the internet for science, conservation and education. VIDA will accomplish this via the National Biological Information Infrastructure and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a coordinated international scientific effort to enable users throughout the world to discover and put to use vast quantities of global biodiversity data.

With over 65 million U.S. records, there are already thousands of Vermont invertebrates in GBIF for you to explore now!

Other Vermont geo-referenced databases:

Odonata of Vermont

Vermont Butterfly Survey

Help Us

VIDA is an unprecedented effort and we want you to be a part of it. Natural history museums, research biologists, universities, environmental groups, and dedicated individuals are uniting to create the most complete database of Vermont invertebrates using the internet, but without your help it cannot be done.

• NEW! Do you have data to contribute? Are your an expert with an invertebrate group? Maybe you'd like volunteer to help enter data, sort specimens, or other important tasks? Fill out the VIDA Questionnaire to help us learn about you!
  
  
• Create a Vermont checklist for an invertebrate group that is your specialty. We'd like to get an idea of what species occur or may be in Vermont. With your help we can make the tally!.

With over 20,000 (we think) invertebrate species thought to be in Vermont, there is plenty for all of us to learn!