FishBase
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|---|---|
| Content | |
| Description | A large and extensively accessed biological database about fish |
| Data types captured |
Comprehensive species data, including taxonomy, biometrics, behaviour, distribution, habitats and photos |
| Organisms | Adult fish species (finfish) |
| Contact | |
| Research center | Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, FishBase Consortium coordinator |
| Authors | Daniel Pauly and Rainer Froese |
| Access | |
| Website | www.fishbase.org |
| Tools | |
| Standalone | Historic versions available on CD |
| Miscellaneous | |
| License | CC-BY-NC for data; various levels of licensing for media files (pictures, sounds, ...) to be checked case by case |
| Versioning | Every even month of the year |
| Data release frequency |
Continuously updated |
| Version | Last current version: October 2016 |
| Curation policy | FishBase Consortium |
| Bookmarkable entities |
Yes |
FishBase is a global species database of fish species (specifically finfish). It is the largest and most extensively accessed online database on adult finfish on the web. Over time it has "evolved into a dynamic and versatile ecological tool" that is widely cited in scholarly publications.
FishBase provides comprehensive species data, including information on taxonomy, geographical distribution, biometrics and morphology, behaviour and habitats, ecology and population dynamics as well as reproductive, metabolic and genetic data. There is access to tools such as trophic pyramids, identification keys, biogeographical modelling and fishery statistics and there are direct species level links to information in other databases such as LarvalBase, GenBank, the IUCN Red List and the Catalog of Fishes.
As of October 2016[update], FishBase included descriptions of 33,400 species and subspecies, 318,900 common names in almost 300 languages, 57,800 pictures, and references to 51,600 works in the scientific literature. The site has about 700,000 unique visitors per month.
The origins of FishBase go back to the 1970s, when the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly found himself struggling to test a hypothesis on how the growing ability of fish was affected by the size of their gills. Hypotheses, such as this one, could be tested only if large amounts of empirical data were available. At the time, fisheries management used analytical models which required estimates for fish growth and mortality. It can be difficult for fishery scientists and managers to get the information they need on the species that concern them, because the relevant facts can be scattered across and buried in numerous journal articles, reports, newsletters and other sources. It can be particularly difficult for people in developing countries who need such information. Pauly believed that the only practical way fisheries managers could access the volume of data they needed was to assemble and consolidate all the data available in the published literature into some central and easily accessed repository. Such a database would be particularly useful if the data has also been standardised and validated. This would mean that when scientists or managers need to test a new hypothesis, the available data will already be there in a validated and accessible form, and there will be no need to create a new dataset and then have to validate it.
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Wikipedia