All Catfish Species Inventory

The All Catfish Species Inventory (ACSI) is proposed as Phase I of a long- term PBI of the Otophysi, the largest clade of freshwater fishes. The inventory is expected to result in the discovery and description of up to 1,750 new species of catfishes and, ultimately, in the description of between 2,300 and 4,600 new species of freshwater fishes. It will result in the completed taxonomy of a globally diverse taxon, Siluriformes, and later in the completed taxonomy of Otophysi, the clade containing over two-thirds of all freshwater fishes.

Products of ACSI will include a completed taxonomy of catfishes with up-to-date identification guides, atlases, catalogues and checklists of species, phylogenetic studies of higher-level relationships among catfishes and an improved predictive classification, large samples of freshwater fishes from poorly collected regions added to permanent collections in U.S. and foreign institutions, and enhanced international communication among fish taxonomists.

ACSI will be authoritative and rapid because it concerns organisms of immediate interest to its many participants. Further, ACSI will set the stage for the continuing inventory of other otophysans with an established international network of senior and newly trained systematists, new and well documented museum collections, identification of gaps in the global freshwater survey, and the framework for documentation, analysis and delivery of large amounts of information on specimens, taxonomy, phylogeny and freshwater biodiversity.

Knowing all species and higher-level relationships in a clade as diverse and widespread as catfishes will offer unprecedented follow-up research opportunities in evolution, ecology and organismal biology. Research will include studies in descriptive systematics, phylogenetics, historical biogeography and comparative biology.

Freshwater ecosystems comprise less than 0.01% of Earth's total water volume. Degradation of freshwater ecosystems is severe in many parts of the world, and aquatic species are among the most endangered. Conservation biologists and fisheries managers depend on accurate taxonomies and museum collection records for prioritizing areas for protection and for making informed species-specific management policies. ACSI's fieldwork will provide for direct interaction between in-situ conservation and resource managers and expert taxonomists. In addition to its overall improvement of taxonomy, ACSI will enhance the accuracy and extent of museum collection records of catfishes by expert identification and georeferencing of associated locality data.

FishNet 2

FishNet 2 is a "distributed information system" that uses DiGIR and XML protocols to link together the specimen records of museums and other institutions in a seamless information-retrieval system. FishNet differs from more centralized databases in several important respects. First, the information is distributed. This means that the databases are located at Partner Institutions and they retain full control over what information they make available to FishNet. Second, Partner Institutions are constantly updating and adding to their records and this new information is available via FishNet on a daily or weekly basis. Third, users can download parts of the databases in a variety of formats and analyze this information on their own computers.

FishNet 2 is an outgrowth of the original FishNet project with improvements in network stability, georeferencing capabilities, and technical support. FishNet 2 is being developed with updated DiGIR protocol software and georeferencing tools for automatic geocoding of all partner institutions' records. The Beta version of the search portal is functional, and as partner institutions are equipped with the DiGIR software package, they can be added to the beta network. Currently, there are 29 partner institutions in 4 continents, and there is an open invitation for any institution with a fish collection to join.

HerpNET

HerpNET is a collaborative effort by institutions in the United States, Canada and Mexico to establish a network between databases of herpetological collections in natural history museums, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF No. 0132303). Currently, 38 institutions are participating in the HerpNET community, with an open-ended invitation to institutions who would like to join.

The mission of HerpNET is to bring the accumulated knowledge from ~3.7 million specimens in museum collections into currency for science and society by creating a distributed database with access from various portals. HerpNET will connect large repositories of information with smaller collections that have regional specializations. Similar efforts (e.g. MaNIS, FishNet 2, MaPSTeDi, ORNIS) have been or are being accomplished for other taxa or regions and the herpetological community is poised to make its own contribution to the study of biodiversity. HerpNET will further advance the biodiversity informatics tools available for biodiversity and environmental science, and will educate the next generation of biodiversity scientists. It will bring together scientists from diverse institutions and offer the opportunity to cross train in information technology, natural history collections, systematics and biodiversity science in general. For more biodiversity data available on-line, please see GBIF - the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

ORNIS (ORNithological Information System)

Approximately 5 million bird specimens are housed in North American biocollections, documenting the global composition, identity, spatial distribution, ecology, systematics, and history of the world's estimated 10,000-16,000 bird species. ORNIS addresses the urgent call for increased access to these data across collections, in an open and collaborative manner, and involves development of a suite of online software tools for data analysis and error-checking. This project, funded by the National Science Foundation, expands on existing infrastructure developed for distributed mammal (MaNIS ), amphibian and reptile (HerpNET), and fish (FishNet 2) databases. Improved access to avian biocollections data will allow predictive uses to reveal patterns and processes of evolutionary and ecological phenomena that have not been apparent heretofore. In conjunction with similar infrastructures for other vertebrate groups, it also will enable detailed and synthetic knowledge of the earth's biodiversity for tracking climate change, emerging diseases (e.g., West Nile Virus), and other conservation challenges for species in the 21st century.