The MVZ, with funding from the National Science Foundation, is a leader in several projects to develop distributed database networks for mammal (MaNIS), herpetological (HerpNET), and avian (ORNIS) specimen collections. HerpNET and ORNIS are in collaboration with the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center. In addition, as a member of the Berkeley Natural History Museums, the MVZ as helped to develop a distributed database query across the 6 diverse collections that comprise this consortium.

These efforts bring together multiple collections using the DiGIR protocol for the purposes of building and supporting biodiversity informatics infrastructures in an open, collaborative manner. In addition to enhancing the value of these collections by facilitating online access to specimen data, and by developing GIS tools for web-based mapping (DiGIR-Mapper) and error-checking of data, these warehouses of information will enable researchers to efficiently address questions on temporal and geographic phenomena in ecology, conservation, systematics, and evolution.