1. FishBase An Internet Gateway to Information on Fish Rainer Froese Institute of Marine Research Kiel, Germany rfroese@ifm.uni-kiel.de

2. Overview What is FishBase? Who uses FishBase? Constraints to usage Important Partners Lessons learned Where is FishBase going?

3. What is FishBase? www.fishbase.de >>www.fishbase.de>> Species summary information >>>> Common names >>>> Synonyms >>>> Population dynamics >>>> Life history tool >>>> Wizards >>>> Biogeographic modelling >>>>

4. Who Uses FishBase? Hits and Visitor Sessions Types of Users Where Do They Come From? What Do They Want? >>>> > 1000 pages link to www.fishbase.org Where is the Science?

5. Where is the Science? 85 ISI Citations, 3 in Nature, 2 in Science IT June 2002

6. Constraints to Usage >>

7. Important Partners Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes FAO Databases (SIDP, FIGIS, Catch) IUCN’s Red List National Fish Databases Genbank ECOTOX Bibliographies (ZR, NISC, ASFA)

8. Lessons Learned ‘Science first’ attitude ‘Yes’ attitude towards suggestions Invite, accept and act on criticism Data quantity and quality first Keep it simple, software keeps changing Invest in people Give more credit than expected What is not used is useless

9. Future Directions Play leading role in biodiversity research Participate in relevant initiatives ( GBIF, ENBI, Species 2000, OBIS, MARBEF, EVBL, PBI, ECOFISH ) From FishBase to SpeciesBase

11. www.fishbase.org

13. FishBase vs Internet Usage Source for Internet growth: NUA Internet Services

14. Based on 1391 entries in the FishBase Guest Book, June 2002

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