Biblos — Interactive Biodiversity Explorer

Biblos is a Tauri desktop application for exploring species, ecosystems, taxonomy, and natural-history media. It combines curated local data with optional live species services and interactive visual tools.

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Tech Used

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Features

• Explore curated species, ecosystems, and the tree of life
• Species search, detailed profiles, classification tree, and comparison view
• Personal collections and folders
• Optional live data and media services, including GBIF, iNaturalist, Wikipedia, and YouTube
• AI Naturalist workspace and natural-language species tooling
• Rust index-seeding command for local data setup, bundled with a pre-seeded species database

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Screenshots

Home: Search the species directory, access quick portal actions, and view daily animal highlights and recently explored records.

Species: Search and filter thousands of indexed species records using real-time taxonomy, habitat, diet, and conservation status filters.

Tree of Life: Navigate global biological classification and animal classes through an interactive hierarchical taxonomy tree.

Explorer: Discover Earth's wildlife across biomes, dietary patterns, activity rhythms, conservation tiers, and geographic regions.

Ecosystems: Browse global biomes and detailed habitat records alongside their representative species.

AI Naturalist: Consult an intelligent conversational AI assistant for natural-history insights and detailed species analysis.

Compare: Perform side-by-side comparative analysis of species physical traits, habitats, diets, and taxonomy.

Collection: Organize starred favorites, bookmarked species records, and custom research folders.

Settings: Manage application caching, local storage, API keys, error logs, and user preferences.

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Project Structure

src/
|-- assets/                 # Brand graphics
|-- components/             # Search, species, taxonomy, collection, and modal UI
|-- data/                   # Curated animals, discovery, ecosystems, tree-of-life data
|-- pages/                  # Explorer, species, ecosystems, compare, collection, settings
|-- services/               # Live data, media, cache, AI, and search services
|-- hooks/                  # Species-media hooks
|-- App.tsx                 # Main application and routes
`-- main.tsx                # React entry point

src-tauri/
|-- src/                    # Tauri backend and seed binary
|-- tauri.conf.json         # Desktop window and bundle configuration
`-- Cargo.toml              # Rust dependencies

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• pnpm
• Rust toolchain
• Tauri system dependencies for your operating system

Install and run

pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

For frontend-only development:

pnpm dev

The Vite server is configured for http://localhost:8668.

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Available Scripts

pnpm dev           # Start Vite
pnpm build         # Type-check and build frontend assets
pnpm preview       # Preview the production frontend build
pnpm tauri dev     # Run the desktop app
pnpm tauri build   # Build the production desktop bundle
pnpm seed:index    # Run the Biblos Rust index seeder

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Exploration Modes

• Species: Search the directory and open detailed species records.
• Explorer: Browse discovery data and filter the natural world by topic.
• Tree of Life: Follow classification relationships from broad groups to individual species.
• Ecosystems: Explore ecosystem records and their species context.
• Compare: Place species side by side for a focused comparison.
• Collection: Save records into personal folders.

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Data and Media Notes

• Curated data is bundled under src/data so the core experience is immediately explorable.
• Service modules provide optional live species, taxonomy, media, and video enrichment.
• The app includes caching, error reporting, confirmation, and toast services to support long-running exploration workflows.
• Some advanced features, such as 3D viewing and AI Naturalist tools, rely on their respective frontend service modules and available external providers.