Bioinspire-Explore: Browsing Biodiversity Data for Bioinspiration

Bioinspiration’s success requires straightforward access to biological data in a form that non-biologists can understand. In this poster, we present a new tool, "Bioinspire-Explore", which allows biomimicry practitioners to delve into global biodiversity data via a user-friendly interface (Saint-Sardos et al., 2024). Through this exploration, stakeholders can uncover biological models potentially relevant to a range of bioinspired fields and sectors. Bioinspire-Explore’s entry point is a taxon of interest (i.e. species, genus, family, etc.) connecting the user to information regarding its position in the phylogenetic "tree of life", its distribution and climatic niche, as well as its appearance. This is achieved through linking Bioinspire-Explore to international databases, namely the Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF (based on the Catalogue of Life taxonomic backbone), WordClim, Wikidata, and INaturalist. Aside from presenting this fundamental biological and ecological information through a single interface, Bioinspire-Explore also allows users to assess the semantic proximity of relevant entities within a corpus of scientific literature pertaining to bioinspiration/biomimicry. This supports bioinspired design by offering potential connections between a taxon and its associated biological functions, environment, or physical characteristics. Bioinspire-Explore thus provides a unique way to explore biodiversity data and visualise biological relationships. This innovative tool acts as a guide, not a replacement for the active involvement of biologists in bioinspiration projects. Rather, it orientates the user towards promising information regarding living systems of interest and presents those systems in their scientific context. It is intended to create opportunities for education, insight, and interaction within bioinspiration teams interested in a “biology-push” approach to innovation.