Support the CephRef Initiative

Welcome to the CephRef campaign!

We are building a new website to compile and share information on global cephalopod biodiversity, identification and biology. For many years, the online Tree of Life web project (ToL) has been our go-to site for this information. Thanks to several experts, the cephalopod pages have been among the most informative and best curated on ToL, and many of us in the cephalopod and marine research communities, as well as members of the public, have come to rely on them for up-to-date information.

However, ToL has been difficult to update in the past few years, access is patchy, and it has not been possible to solve these issues to guarantee ongoing access to the wealth of cephalopod information currently stored there.

A new online home for these resources is needed! CephRef aims to migrate the ToL cephalopod information to a newer, more stable and dynamic platform, with opportunities to update and refresh the content to reflect our current state of knowledge. For many cephalopods, we can now add molecular information, live imagery and links to video observations in their natural habitats. You can view the website and sample taxon pages for the giant squid (Architeuthis dux), the glass squid (cranchiid) genus Liocranchia, and the family Enoploteuthidae (will post link separately).

Like ToL, CephRef content will be created and edited by volunteer experts. The project has been initiated by the AUT Lab for Cephalopod Ecology and Systematics (ALCES) at Auckland University of Technology, in collaboration with several of the main ToL cephalopod contributors. This campaign aims to raise the funds we need to pay our developer to build and maintain the site for its first five years.

Thanks for your support—we look forward to sharing our progress with you, and our cephalopod information with the world!