From FishBase to SpeciesBase Rainer Froese Germany rfroese@ifm-geomar.de Stockholm Biodiversity Informatics Symposium 1.12.2008

The Vision Back in 1987, two scientists had an idea… 21 years later Create a database with key-information on 200 commercial fish species Use it for research Make it available to 500 fisheries managers in developing countries 21 years later www.fishbase.org contains information on 31,000 species Has over 1,000 citations in the scientific literature Has over 1 million visitors per month in the Internet

If these stocks were Stocks… October 2008 34 million hits 1 million visitors

It Looks Like This… Atlantic cod Gadus morhua

And This

And This

Where is the Science?

Need a Hammer?

Reaching out

Feedback

Who is Using it?

How did they find us?

Where?

Google Analytics

What?

Where is the Science? 85 ISI Citations, 3 in Nature, 2 in Science (June 2002)

Google Scholar, April 2006: 1610 citations, including 5 in Nature and 7 in Science

Who is FishBase?

32/32

Partners and Sponsors

From FishBase to SeaLifeBase

If this looks familiar..

The usual suspects

From SeaLifeBase to SpeciesBase

Fish are from FishBase

Crabs are from SeaLifeBase

Algae will be from AlgaeBase

Terrestrial species still looking for partners ????Base presented through SpeciesBase

Global Species Information Systems (GSIS) General agreement on the need for several portals in different languages with regional/national focus But key information shall be the same across portals (to be exchanged between providers)

Encyclopedia of Life (EoL, USA) Current GSIS Encyclopedia of Life (EoL, USA) (www.eol.org) Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) (www.ala.org.au) SpeciesBase (Europe) (www.speciesbase.org)

Thank You