About IBIS

Indian Biodiversity Information System (IBIS) is a free and open reserve of comprehensive scientific information about all plant and animal lifeforms on the Indian subcontinent. IBIS provides anyone, anywhere instant access to data on Indian flora and fauna in a user-friendly, freely accessible format. An initiative of Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), the IBIS portal is modelled on the concept of citizen science.

IBIS provides authenticated and simplified data about Indian biodiversity for anyone who needs it. IBIS collates extensive volumes of biodiversity data through varied channels, including contributions from the citizen scientists, hobbyists, naturalists, academic researchers, and even other citizen-science portals. After reviews, verifications, and analyses by experienced biologists, the portal showcases data in a structured, intuitive, and interactive fashion.

It is the mission of IBIS to foster greater public engagement in science, while supporting scientists and community members develop robust strategies for biodiversity conservation and wildlife protection efforts. Moreover, IBIS aspires to equip local communities with the power of information, so that they can manage land and water resources more efficiently, thereby conserving traditional nature-centric lives and livelihoods. Further, IBIS aims to highlight the social value of biodiversity and promote public engagement and understanding of it, thus paving way for greater democratisation of science.

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Sandeep Das
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Sandeep Das
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Akshay Shinde
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Sujith
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Akshay Shinde
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Maitreyi
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Mahek Vyas
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Vincy K Wilson
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Tekhe Chirhah
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Akshay Shinde
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Vineeth Kartha
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Sujith
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Sujith
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Vineeth Kartha
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Kaushal Patel

How it works

Data Repository

IBIS garners data from varied sources—citizens, researchers, and other biodiversity portals—to form a one-stop repository. Indexed here, you can access geo-referenced species occurrence points, species profiles, excerpts from studies, biodiversity reports, and distributional data.

Citizen Science

At the core of IBIS is You! Whoever you are: a scientist, teacher, naturalist, birder, community researcher, or just a citizen, IBIS is powered by your observations, findings, recordings, community research, or just personal pursuits such as hobbies.

Analytics

At IBIS, species data and layers integrated through various sources serve as input to the analytics section. We present data that you can play with—apply environmental layers, explore interactive maps of species of your choice, and run species distribution models.

Community

The data you contribute is invaluable for thousands of educators, scientists, and communities in their data-driven efforts to protect wildlife, revive habitats, restore commons, and safeguard indigenous living spaces and livelihoods. Data is the centrepin of all of that work.

What we have achieved so far

Occurence Data

Total Species

Total Families

Added This Week

Features

Become a Citizen Scientist

IBIS community of citizen scientists hail from varied disciplines.IBIS welcomes you to sign up and start contributing data—location tags species citing and observations and photographs or audio-video files. If you have the time curiosity and a scientific temper you can be a citizen scientist too and start contributing to IBIS.

Data Playground

Sign up with IBIS to gain access to the IBIS Data Playground! Here, you can explore a range of interactive data— view ecological, physical, and environmental layers, visualisations of species distribution, location-based geo-visualisations, and broad-scale patterns of ecological factors using observational data from citizen scientists and garnered from other biodiversity portals.

Consortium of Experts

IBIS members gain access to our Consortium of Experts, a panel of specialists, including naturalists, botanists, zoologists, hydrologists, conservationists, and ecologists. You can direct your requests such as species ID help or call recording review to our panel. The consortium also reviews, authenticates, and analyses data that citizen scientists contribute to IBIS.

Forums and Blogs

Science belongs to everyone. Beyond just contributing data, IBIS encourages our citizen scientists to also engage with the larger community of contributors and researchers. IBIS promotes meaningful dialogues about biodiversity and conservation efforts. Our blog presents relevant articles by experts and synopses of latest research papers. These forums encourage public participation in science.

SDM

Species Distributions Models (SDM) corelate the presence or absence records of species to relevant environmental factors. IBIS members can access Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) models that project relationships by overlaying environmental data layers across locations. The resultant maps indicate a species’ environmental suitability, thus indicating abundance of the species or lack thereof.

Our Collaborative Reach

Collaborators & Funding Partners