Biodiversa
Outcome
A living biodiversity research portal that draws live species data from six integrated sources — and surfaces related reading that's actually related — semantic, source-curated.
Client Context
Biodiversa is a biodiversity research and documentation platform led by Prof. Marcus Franzen. The site is a public-facing research resource and a working tool for field researchers, combining the depth of a scientific database with the accessibility of a public-interest website. It is the most technically ambitious of the three Franzen builds, and the one where MADDev's signature capabilities are most visible.
Challenge
Biodiversity research sites face a structural editorial problem: the underlying science moves faster than any editorial team can keep up. Species taxonomies change, new observations are lodged in global databases, new research is published daily. The site needed to be current at all times without demanding constant manual updates — and it needed to surface related news and research intelligently, not by tag-matching.
Build
Drupal 10 with the full species_ext integration: live species data from six integrated sources (five live) — Catalogue of Life, GBIF, iNaturalist, IUCN Red List, Wikipedia, and EOL (Encyclopedia of Life). Every species page pulls current authoritative data on taxonomy, distribution, conservation status, and observations — on every load, from primary sources.
The site also surfaces related reading that's actually related — semantic, source-curated: every species or project page surfaces genuinely relevant external content, automatically updated, without relying on keyword tags.
Full WCAG 2.1 AA. Structured data / schema.org throughout.
Stack
Data Sources
Live species data from six integrated sources (five live): Catalogue of Life, GBIF, iNaturalist, IUCN Red List, Wikipedia, and EOL (Encyclopedia of Life). Data is not cached locally beyond standard request-caching; records are live from primary sources.
Notable
Most biodiversity sites are editorial products — a team writes content about species, curates lists, updates pages. Biodiversa inverts this: the site is a delivery mechanism for live authoritative data, with editorial content layered over it. The AI related-news engine adds a second dimension — the site knows what it is about and finds the world's current thinking on that subject. Together, these make it the kind of site a PhD student actually bookmarks as a working tool, not just a citation source. Both capabilities are now available to any MADDev client working in research, science, or data-rich content.
Site URL