An all-taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, is an attempt to document and identify all biological species living in some defined area, usually a park, reserve, or research area. The term was coined in 1993, in connection with an effort initiated by ecologist Daniel Janzen to document the diversity of the Guanacaste National Park in Costa Rica.[1]
One of the most active and perhaps most thorough ATBIs to date focuses on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of the southeastern United States. Initiated in 1998, the Smokies ATBI is managed by a non-profit NGO, called Discover Life in America, in coordination with the National Park Service.[2] Over more than 20 years, the Smokies ATBI has added more than 10,000 species records for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including more than 1,000 newly-described species, bringing the total known diversity of the Park to over 20,000 species.[3]
A number of other, similar, efforts have been initiated for a variety of parks and research field stations.
According to Kieth Langdon and Peter White of the Smoky Mountains ATBI, an “ATBI is about the discovery and taxonomic identification of species and the creation of museum specimens and data that document those species, but it seeks to develop taxonomic information in an ecological, conservation, and educational context.”[4]
All ATBIs are inherently incomplete since, a) the biota of even well-studied areas includes many undescribed and often difficult-to-study species, and b) new species are regularly established through immigration and introduction.