Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine
An open API and data platform aggregating millions of biodiversity and environmental observations from UC Berkeley's natural history collections and partner institutions.
- biodiversity
- API
- open-data
- natural-history
The Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine (also known as Holos) is an open-access data platform developed by GIF with support from the W.M. Keck Foundation. It aggregates millions of biological observations, specimen records, and sensor data from UC Berkeley’s natural history collections — including the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, the University Herbarium, and the Essig Museum of Entomology — alongside partner institutions across California.
The platform exposes all data through a public REST API, enabling researchers to query across collections by taxon, geography, and time. It supports studies in biodiversity informatics, macroecology, and climate-change biology.
The Ecoinformatics Engine represents GIF’s work at the intersection of museum informatics, open data infrastructure, and ecological research.