The web site has been created to maintain information about taxonomic names and their relationships.

Biology Catalog is an end product of a project started over twenty years ago to create a hierarchal listing of the genera of all organisms.  It was found that by creating a species listing of the group, a much better generic listing was created.

The listings are mostly based on old catalogs for groups and updated with modern revisions, zoological record and help from specialists for those groups.

During the process of creating the listing, a specialist in the group was selected to maintain and be responsible for the data.  These specialists are called
Group Coordinators and are the editors for many groups, usually at the level of family. When they log in, web pages for editing are made available to them.

Search is divided into three main areas and the three cross links for them: Author, Literature [Reference] and Taxon. The cross links are RefAuthor, TaxaRef and TaxaAuthor.

The following is a list of the pages, what they are used for and how to work them:
1. Author: Start at "Enter Partial Author Name and press Enter".  A list of Authors will appear in the list box below the text box. Select one by clicking on it and a list of references will appear in the list box for references.  The listing will be sorted by title.  If you want the listing sorted by Year, click in the circle before that statement. You can choose one of these references and then go to Search - Literature to see the full information for this reference. After an author has been selected, you can go to Search -  AuthorTaxon to see a listing of all the taxa created by this author
2. Literature [References]: Start at "Enter Partial Title and press Enter".  A list of literature titles will appear in the list box below the text box.  Select one of these and the full details for the reference will be displayed.
3. Taxon: Start at "Enter Partial Taxon Name and press Enter".  A list of Taxon will be displayed in the list box below if you press on the down arrow of that list box.  Select one of those and then all the information for that taxon will be displayed to the left.  Befow is a list of children for the taxon [if any] and to the right is a list of synonyms that exist for the taxon [if any]. 
    Parent and higher level group names for the Taxon appear on the top of the page.  The immediate parent is on the top left.  To find a higher level group for the taxon, start at "Find Upper Level - choose a level".  Click the downarrow on the list box below and select a level.  The name of that level will be displayed in the text box to the right.
    To find full information for the Parent of the taxon, click on the small empty square just to the right of The Level of the Parent.  This will make the Parent name the current taxon and will display its full information.
   To find full information for a Child of the taxon, click on one of the children of the Taxon and it will become the current taxon.
   To find full information for a Synonym of the taxon, click on one of the synonyms of the Taxon and it will become the current taxon.
   To find more information on fossil taxa, click on the button that is labeled: Diagnostics.  This will bring up a new page with the following information:
   a) Diagnostic Features
   b) Geologic Distribution -- fossil ages plus locality data.
   c) Remarks - comments
   d) Pictures of the fossil
4. AuthorTaxon: Shows a listing of all the taxa created by this author.  Select a taxon and go to Search - Taxa to see full information on this taxon.
5.TaxonReferences: A Taxon has previously been selected on the Taxon page or AuthorTaxon page.  Go to Search - TaxonReferences and a list of references will be presented for the taxon.  Select one of those references and the full literature title will be presented.  Press PDF and a PDF of the reference will be presented if available.

Also, a few pages are used for looking at the data collectively:
6. Synopsis: Select a Taxon at a level higher than family on the Taxon or AuthorTaxon page and Go to Synopsis to see a synopsis of this group.
7. Tree: under developement.
8. Listing: Select a Taxon at a level less than superfamily on the Taxon or AuthorTaxon page and Go to Listing to see a listing of this group. If a Coordinator exists for a group, a Coordinator page will be presented before the listing.
9. Coordinator Page: A list of Coordinators is presented in a list box.  Select a Coordinator and a list of the groups he works with will be presented.  Select one of the groups to see if any other Coordinators work on that group.

The web site is maintained by Joel Hallan of Austin, Texas, USA, who can be contacted at the following email address:
   joelkhallan (at} gmail.com
Coordinators use a different email address.

The web site is hosted by a department of Texas A & M University.