NHM Interactions Bank

The Natural History Museum Interactions Bank currently contains over 350,000 species interactions, aggregated from a variety of existing databases maintained by the museum, including the HOSTS database of lepidopteran host plants and the Universal Chalcidoidea Database. The database achieves a complex cross linking of biological data by aggregating multiple data types including recording the life cycle stage of interactions (allowing for parasites with multiple hosts), the parts of organisms involved in interactions (e.g. seed feeding beetles), the location of the interaction, links between voucher specimens of an interaction, and whether the interaction was recorded in the wild or in a laboratory setting. In addition the system can indicate records which occur only in captivity (e.g. alternative food plants used for raising insects).

Data is aggregated and available as Open Data on the NHM Data Portal, and is aggregated by the Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI) project.