With over 12,000 described species and many more awaiting description and discovery, ants are one of the most ecologically and numerically abundant of the planet’s megadiverse groups. In this second meeting of a series, ant biologists from around the world came together to further our goals of providing freely available online taxonomic tools including a complete taxonomic catalog, images of type specimens and other specimens, distribution data, general biological notes, etc., while making these data available to the Encyclopedia of Life website and others working with this taxonomically diverse group via Antweb.org. Although much has been accomplished since our last synthesis meeting, including contributions of thousands of images and data from Antweb.org to EOL.org, there are several aspects of our immediate goals that would benefit ant biologist worldwide, while contributing to the greater mission of EOL. Specifically by providing a current and accurate taxonomic catalog, many of the inaccuracies found on the EOL website will be corrected. In addition, we plan to standardize community contributions to Antweb.org in a way that is beneficial to both taxonomists and biologist that use this website, while also making the use of this resource to EOL more streamlined.
