1.
Conservation status
–
The conservation status of a group of organisms indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Various systems of conservation status exist and are in use at international, multi-country, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Also included are species that have gone extinct since 500 AD, when discussing the IUCN Red List, the official term threatened is a grouping of three categories, critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category, Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora aims to ensure that trade in specimens of wild animals. Many countries require CITES permits when importing plants and animals listed on CITES, in the European Union, the Birds and Habitats Directives are the legal instruments that evaluate the conservation status within the EU of species and habitats. NatureServe conservation status focuses on Latin America, United States, Canada, and it has been developed by scientists from NatureServe, The Nature Conservancy, and the network of natural heritage programs and data centers. It is increasingly integrated with the IUCN Red List system and its categories for species include, presumed extinct, possibly extinct, critically imperiled, imperiled, vulnerable, apparently secure, and secure. The system also allows ambiguous or uncertain ranks including inexact numeric ranks, NatureServe adds a qualifier for captive or cultivated only, which has a similar meaning to the IUCN Red List extinct in the wild status. The Red Data Book of the Russian Federation is used within the Russian Federation, in Australia, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 describes lists of threatened species, ecological communities and threatening processes. The categories resemble those of the 1994 IUCN Red List Categories & Criteria, prior to the EPBC Act, a simpler classification system was used by the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992. Some state and territory governments also have their own systems for conservation status, in Belgium, the Flemish Research Institute for Nature and Forest publishes an online set of more than 150 nature indicators in Dutch. In Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada is a group of experts that assesses and designates which wild species are in danger of disappearing from Canada. Under the Species at Risk Act, it is up to the federal government, in China, the State, provinces and some counties have determined their key protected wildlife species. There is the China red data book, in Finland, a large number of species are protected under the Nature Conservation Act, and through the EU Habitats Directive and EU Birds Directive. In Germany, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation publishes red lists of endangered species, india has the Wild Life Protection Act,1972, Amended 2003 and the Biological Diversity Act,2002. In Japan, the Ministry of Environment publishes a Threatened Wildlife of Japan Red Data Book, in the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality publishes a list of threatened species, and conservation is enforced by the Nature Conservation Act 1998. Species are also protected through the Wild Birds and Habitats Directives, in New Zealand, the Department of Conservation publishes the New Zealand Threat Classification System lists
2.
IUCN Red List
–
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, founded in 1964, is the worlds most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the main authority on the conservation status of species. A series of Regional Red Lists are produced by countries or organizations, the IUCN Red List is set upon precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world, the aim is to convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction. Major species assessors include BirdLife International, the Institute of Zoology, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, collectively, assessments by these organizations and groups account for nearly half the species on the Red List. The IUCN aims to have the category of every species re-evaluated every five years if possible, the 1964 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants used the older pre-criteria Red List assessment system. Plants listed may not, therefore, appear in the current Red List, IUCN advise that is best to check both the online Red List and the 1997 plants Red List publication. The 2006 Red List, released on 4 May 2006 evaluated 40,168 species as a whole, plus an additional 2,160 subspecies, varieties, aquatic stocks, on 12 September 2007, the World Conservation Union released the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Russ Mittermeier, chief of Swiss-based IUCNs Primate Specialist Group, stated that 16,306 species are endangered with extinction,188 more than in 2006, the Red List includes the Sumatran orangutan in the Critically Endangered category and the Bornean orangutan in the Endangered category. The study shows at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction, and 836 are listed as Data Deficient. The Red List of 2012 was released 19 July 2012 at Rio+20 Earth Summit, nearly 2,000 species were added, the IUCN assessed a total of 63,837 species which revealed 19,817 are threatened with extinction. With 3,947 described as endangered and 5,766 as endangered. At threat are 41% of amphibian species, 33% of reef-building corals, 30% of conifers, 25% of mammals, the IUCN Red List has listed 132 species of plants and animals from India as Critically Endangered. Extinct – No known individuals remaining, extinct in the wild – Known only to survive in captivity, or as a naturalized population outside its historic range. Critically endangered – Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, Endangered – High risk of extinction in the wild. Vulnerable – High risk of endangerment in the wild, near threatened – Likely to become endangered in the near future. Does not qualify for a more at-risk category, widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category. Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction, Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria
3.
Taxonomy (biology)
–
Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
4.
Animalia
–
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
5.
Chordate
–
Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
6.
Actinopterygii
–
Actinopterygii /ˌæktᵻnˌɒptəˈrɪdʒi. aɪ/, or the ray-finned fishes, constitute a class or subclass of the bony fishes. These actinopterygian fin rays attach directly to the proximal or basal skeletal elements, the radials, numerically, actinopterygians are the dominant class of vertebrates, comprising nearly 99% of the over 30,000 species of fish. They are ubiquitous throughout freshwater and marine environments from the sea to the highest mountain streams. Extant species can range in size from Paedocypris, at 8 mm, to the ocean sunfish, at 2,300 kg. Ray-finned fishes occur in variant forms. The main features of a typical ray-finned fish are shown in the diagram at the left. In nearly all ray-finned fish, the sexes are separate, development then proceeds with a free-swimming larval stage. However other patterns of ontogeny exist, with one of the commonest being sequential hermaphroditism, in most cases this involves protogyny, fish starting life as females and converting to males at some stage, triggered by some internal or external factor. This may be advantageous as females become less prolific as they age while male fecundity increases with age, protandry, where a fish converts from male to female, is much less common than protogyny. Most families use external rather than internal fertilization, of the oviparous teleosts, most do not provide parental care. Viviparity is relatively rare and is found in about 6% of teleost species, male territoriality preadapts a species for evolving male parental care. There are a few examples of fish that self-fertilise, the mangrove rivulus is an amphibious, simultaneous hermaphrodite, producing both eggs and spawn and having internal fertilisation. This mode of reproduction may be related to the habit of spending long periods out of water in the mangrove forests it inhabits. Males are occasionally produced at temperatures below 19 °C and can fertilise eggs that are spawned by the female. This maintains genetic variability in a species that is otherwise highly inbred, the earliest known fossil actinopterygiian is Andreolepis hedei, dating back 420 million years. Remains have been found in Russia, Sweden, and Estonia, actinopterygians are divided into the subclasses Chondrostei and Neopterygii. The Neopterygii, in turn, are divided into the infraclasses Holostei and Teleostei, during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic the teleosts in particular diversified widely, and as a result, 96% of all known fish species are teleosts. The cladogram shows the groups of actinopterygians and their relationship to the terrestrial vertebrates that evolved from a related group of fish
7.
Perciformes
–
Perciformes, also called the Percomorpha or Acanthopteri, are the largest order of vertebrates, containing about 41% of all bony fish. They belong to the class of ray-finned fish, and comprise over 10,000 species found in almost all aquatic ecosystems, the order contains about 160 families, which is the most of any order within the vertebrates. It is also the most variably sized order of vertebrates, ranging from the 7-mm Schindleria brevipinguis to the marlin in the Makaira genus and they first appeared and diversified in the Late Cretaceous. Among the well-known members of group are cichlids, California sheephead, bluegill, damselfish, snappers, bass. The dorsal and anal fins are divided into anterior spiny and posterior soft-rayed portions, the pelvic fins usually have one spine and up to five soft rays, positioned unusually far forward under the chin or under the belly. Scales are usually ctenoid, although sometimes they are cycloid or otherwise modified, as traditionally defined before the introduction of cladistics, the Perciformes are almost certainly paraphyletic. Other orders that should possibly be included as suborders are the Scorpaeniformes, Tetraodontiformes, of the presently recognized suborders, several may be paraphyletic, as well. These are grouped by suborder/superfamily, generally following the text Fishes of the World
8.
Lutjanidae
–
Snappers are a family of perciform fish, Lutjanidae, mainly marine, but with some members inhabiting estuaries, feeding in fresh water. The family includes about 113 species, one of the best known is the red snapper. Snappers inhabit tropical and subtropical regions of all oceans, some snappers grow up to about 1 m in length however one specific Snapper, the Cubera Snapper, grows up to 5 ft in length. Most are active carnivores, feeding on crustaceans or other fish and they can be kept in aquaria, but mostly grow too fast to be popular aquarium fish. Most species live at depths reaching 100 m near coral reefs, as other fish, snappers harbour parasites. A detailed study conducted in New Caledonia has shown that coral reef-associated snappers harbour about 9 species of parasites per fish species
9.
Binomial nomenclature
–
Such a name is called a binomial name, a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name, more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs, for example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens. The formal introduction of system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book Pinax theatri botanici many names of genera that were adopted by Linnaeus. Although the general principles underlying binomial nomenclature are common to these two codes, there are differences, both in the terminology they use and in their precise rules. Similarly, both parts are italicized when a binomial name occurs in normal text, thus the binomial name of the annual phlox is now written as Phlox drummondii. In scientific works, the authority for a name is usually given, at least when it is first mentioned. In zoology Patella vulgata Linnaeus,1758, the original name given by Linnaeus was Fringilla domestica, the parentheses indicate that the species is now considered to belong in a different genus. The ICZN does not require that the name of the person who changed the genus be given, nor the date on which the change was made, in botany Amaranthus retroflexus L. – L. is the standard abbreviation used in botany for Linnaeus. – Linnaeus first named this bluebell species Scilla italica, Rothmaler transferred it to the genus Hyacinthoides, the ICN does not require that the dates of either publication be specified. Prior to the adoption of the binomial system of naming species. Together they formed a system of polynomial nomenclature and these names had two separate functions. First, to designate or label the species, and second, to be a diagnosis or description, such polynomial names may sometimes look like binomials, but are significantly different. For example, Gerards herbal describes various kinds of spiderwort, The first is called Phalangium ramosum, Branched Spiderwort, is aptly termed Phalangium Ephemerum Virginianum, Soon-Fading Spiderwort of Virginia. The Latin phrases are short descriptions, rather than identifying labels, the Bauhins, in particular Caspar Bauhin, took some important steps towards the binomial system, by pruning the Latin descriptions, in many cases to two words. The adoption by biologists of a system of binomial nomenclature is due to Swedish botanist and physician Carl von Linné. It was in his 1753 Species Plantarum that he first began using a one-word trivial name together with a generic name in a system of binomial nomenclature. This trivial name is what is now known as an epithet or specific name
10.
Synonym (taxonomy)
–
For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies. This name is no longer in use, it is now a synonym of the current scientific name which is Picea abies, unlike synonyms in other contexts, in taxonomy a synonym is not interchangeable with the name of which it is a synonym. In taxonomy, synonyms are not equals, but have a different status, for any taxon with a particular circumscription, position, and rank, only one scientific name is considered to be the correct one at any given time. A synonym cannot exist in isolation, it is always an alternative to a different scientific name, given that the correct name of a taxon depends on the taxonomic viewpoint used a name that is one taxonomists synonym may be another taxonomists correct name. Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is described and named more than once, independently. They may also arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to one, a species is moved to a different genus. To the general user of scientific names, in such as agriculture, horticulture, ecology, general science. A synonym is a name that was used as the correct scientific name but which has been displaced by another scientific name. Thus Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the term as a name which has the same application as another. In handbooks and general texts, it is useful to have mentioned as such after the current scientific name. Synonyms used in this way may not always meet the strict definitions of the synonym in the formal rules of nomenclature which govern scientific names. Changes of scientific name have two causes, they may be taxonomic or nomenclatural, a name change may be caused by changes in the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, representing a change in taxonomic, scientific insight. A name change may be due to purely nomenclatural reasons, that is, based on the rules of nomenclature, the earliest such name is called the senior synonym, while the later name is the junior synonym. One basic principle of zoological nomenclature is that the earliest correctly published name, synonyms are important because if the earliest name cannot be used, then the next available junior synonym must be used for the taxon. Objective synonyms refer to taxa with the type and same rank. For example, John Edward Gray published the name Antilocapra anteflexa in 1855 for a species of pronghorn, however, it is now commonly accepted that his specimen was an unusual individual of the species Antilocapra americana published by George Ord in 1815. Ords name thus takes precedence, with Antilocapra anteflexa being a subjective synonym. Objective synonyms are common at the level of genera, because for various reasons two genera may contain the type species, these are objective synonyms
11.
Species
–
In biology, a species is the basic unit of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. While this definition is often adequate, looked at more closely it is problematic, for example, with hybridisation, in a species complex of hundreds of similar microspecies, or in a ring species, the boundaries between closely related species become unclear. Other ways of defining species include similarity of DNA, morphology, all species are given a two-part name, a binomial. The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs, the second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet. For example, Boa constrictor is one of four species of the Boa genus, Species were seen from the time of Aristotle until the 18th century as fixed kinds that could be arranged in a hierarchy, the great chain of being. In the 19th century, biologists grasped that species could evolve given sufficient time, Charles Darwins 1859 book The Origin of Species explained how species could arise by natural selection. Genes can sometimes be exchanged between species by horizontal transfer, and species may become extinct for a variety of reasons. In his biology, Aristotle used the term γένος to mean a kind, such as a bird or fish, a kind was distinguished by its attributes, for instance, a bird has feathers, a beak, wings, a hard-shelled egg, and warm blood. A form was distinguished by being shared by all its members, Aristotle believed all kinds and forms to be distinct and unchanging. His approach remained influential until the Renaissance, when observers in the Early Modern period began to develop systems of organization for living things, they placed each kind of animal or plant into a context. Many of these early delineation schemes would now be considered whimsical, animals likewise that differ specifically preserve their distinct species permanently, one species never springs from the seed of another nor vice versa. In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified organisms according to shared physical characteristics and he established the idea of a taxonomic hierarchy of classification based upon observable characteristics and intended to reflect natural relationships. At the time, however, it was widely believed that there was no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appeared. However, whether or not it was supposed to be fixed, by the 19th century, naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his 1809 Zoological Philosophy, described the transmutation of species, proposing that a species could change over time, in 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided a compelling account of evolution and the formation of new species. Darwin argued that it was populations that evolved, not individuals and this required a new definition of species. Darwin concluded that species are what appear to be, ideas
12.
Indian Ocean
–
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia
13.
Pacific Ocean
–
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of the Earths oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, the Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 metres. Both the center of the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean, the oceans current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favourable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means peaceful sea, important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan, trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but apparently not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality, from 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean. The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and he named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Later, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519, Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century, sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, and Papua New Guinea. In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan, in 1564, five Spanish ships consisting of 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history, Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the 16th and 17th century Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a Mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers, as the only known entrance from the Atlantic the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western end of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines, Spain also sent expeditions to the Pacific Northwest reaching Vancouver Island in southern Canada, and Alaska. The French explored and settled Polynesia, and the British made three voyages with James Cook to the South Pacific and Australia, Hawaii, and the North American Pacific Northwest, one of the earliest voyages of scientific exploration was organized by Spain in the Malaspina Expedition of 1789–1794. It sailed vast areas of the Pacific, from Cape Horn to Alaska, Guam and the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, and the South Pacific. Growing imperialism during the 19th century resulted in the occupation of much of Oceania by other European powers, and later, Japan, in Oceania, France got a leading position as imperial power after making Tahiti and New Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. After navy visits to Easter Island in 1875 and 1887, Chilean navy officer Policarpo Toro managed to negotiate an incorporation of the island into Chile with native Rapanui in 1888, by occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations
14.
Hawaii
–
Hawaii is the 50th and most recent state to have joined the United States of America, having received statehood on August 21,1959. Hawaii is the only U. S. state located in Oceania and it is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is the only U. S. state not located in the Americas, the state encompasses nearly the entire volcanic Hawaiian archipelago, which comprises hundreds of islands spread over 1,500 miles. At the southeastern end of the archipelago, the eight main islands are—in order from northwest to southeast, Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and the Island of Hawaiʻi. The last is the largest island in the group, it is called the Big Island or Hawaiʻi Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago. The archipelago is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania, Hawaii has over a million permanent residents, along with many visitors and U. S. military personnel. Its capital is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii is the 8th-smallest and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated of the fifty U. S. states. It is the state with an Asian plurality. The states coastline is about 750 miles long, the fourth longest in the U. S. after the coastlines of Alaska, Florida, the state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that was named for Hawaiʻiloa and he is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled. The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian *Sawaiki, cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori, Rarotongan and Samoan. According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, lsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the home, but in Hawaii. A somewhat divisive political issue arose in 1978 when the Constitution of the State of Hawaii added Hawaiian as an official state language. The title of the constitution is The Constitution of the State of Hawaii. Article XV, Section 1 of the Constitution uses The State of Hawaii, diacritics were not used because the document, drafted in 1949, predates the use of the okina and the kahakō in modern Hawaiian orthography. The exact spelling of the name in the Hawaiian language is Hawaiʻi. In the Hawaii Admission Act that granted Hawaiian statehood, the government recognized Hawaii as the official state name. Official government publications, department and office titles, and the Seal of Hawaii use the spelling with no symbols for glottal stops or vowel length
15.
Tahiti
–
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, this overseas collectivity of the French Republic is sometimes referred to as a French overseas country. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs, the population is 183,645 inhabitants, making it the most populous island of French Polynesia and accounting for 68.5 percent of its total population. Tahiti is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia, the capital, Papeete, is located on the northwest coast with the only international airport in the region, Faaā International Airport, situated 5 km from the town centre. Tahiti was originally settled by Polynesians between 300 and 800 CE and they represent about 70 percent of the islands population with the rest made up of Europeans, Chinese and those of mixed heritage. The island was part of the Kingdom of Tahiti until its annexation by France in 1880, when it was proclaimed a colony of France, French is the only official language although the Tahitian language is widely spoken. Tahiti is the highest and largest island in French Polynesia lying close to Moorea island and it is located 4,400 kilometres south of Hawaii,7,900 km from Chile and 5,700 km from Australia. The island is 45 km across at its widest point and covers an area of 1,045 km2, the highest peak is Mont Orohena. Mount Roonui, or Mount Ronui in the southeast rises to 1,332 m, the island consists of two roughly round portions centred on volcanic mountains and connected by a short isthmus named after the small town of Taravao, situated there. The northwestern portion is known as Tahiti Nui, while the much smaller portion is known as Tahiti Iti or Taiarapū. Tahiti Nui is heavily populated along the coast, especially around the capital, the interior of Tahiti Nui is almost entirely uninhabited. Tahiti Iti has remained isolated, as its half is accessible only to those travelling by boat or on foot. The rest of the island is encircled by a road which cuts between the mountains and the sea. A scenic and winding road climbs past dairy farms and citrus groves with panoramic views. Tahitis landscape features lush rainforests and many rivers and waterfalls, including the Papenoo River on the side. November to April is the wet season, the wettest month of which is January with 13.2 in of rain in Papeetē, August is the driest with 1.9 inches. The average temperature ranges between 21 and 31 °C with little seasonal variation, the lowest and highest temperatures recorded in Papeete are 16 and 34 °C, respectively. The first Tahitians arrived from Southeast Asia in about 200 BCE and this hypothesis of an emigration from Southeast Asia is supported by a number of linguistic, biological and archaeological proofs. For example, the languages of Fiji and Polynesia all belong to the same Oceanic sub-group, Fijian-Polynesian, in 1769, for instance, James Cook mentions a great traditional ship in Tahiti that was 33 m long, and could be propelled by sail or paddles
16.
Commercial fishing
–
Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for commercial profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the earth, large-scale commercial fishing is also known as industrial fishing. This profession has gained in popularity with the development of such as Deadliest Catch, Swords. The major fishing industries are not only owned by major corporations, the industry has had to adapt through the years in order to keep earning a profit. A study taken on some small family-owned commercial fishing companies showed that they adapted to continue to earn a living but not necessarily make a large profit. Commercial fishermen harvest a variety of animals, ranging from tuna, cod, carp, and salmon to shrimp, krill, lobster, clams, squid. There are large and important fisheries worldwide for species of fish, mollusks, crustaceans. However, a small number of species support the majority of the worlds fisheries. Some of these species are herring, cod, anchovy, tuna, flounder, mullet, squid, shrimp, salmon, crab, lobster, oyster and scallops. All except these last four provided a catch of well over a million tonnes in 1999, with herring. Many other species are fished in smaller numbers, commercial fishing may offer an abundance of jobs, but the pay varies from boat to boat, season to season. That may be true, but there are also the boats who dont do well, a 2009 paper in Science estimates, for the first time, the total world fish biomass as somewhere between 0.8 and 2.0 billion tonnes. Sustainability of fisheries is improved by using equipment that eliminates or minimizes catching non-targeted species. Fishing methods vary according to the region, the species being fished for, a commercial fishing enterprise may vary from one man with a small boat with hand-casting nets or a few pot traps, to a huge fleet of trawlers processing tons of fish every day. Billions of dollars are spent each year in researching/developing new techniques to reduce the injury, in fact, there was a study taken in 2000 on different deterrents and how effective they are at deterring the target species. The study showed that most auditory deterrents helped prevent whales from being caught while more physical barriers helped prevent birds from getting tangled within the net. During 2000–2006, commercial fishing was one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, falling overboard specifically killed 182 fishermen in the period between 2000 and 2010. This fatality rate is 3 times that of the next most dangerous job in the U. S. also, between the years of 1919 and 2005,4111 fishermen died in fishing related accidents in the United Kingdom industry alone
17.
Game fish
–
Game fish are fish pursued for sport by recreational anglers. They can be freshwater or saltwater fish, Game fish can be eaten after being caught, though increasingly anglers practice catch and release to improve fish populations. Some game fish are targeted commercially, particularly salmon. The species of fish pursued by anglers varies with geography, some fish are sought for their value as food while others are pursued for their fighting abilities or for the difficulty of pursuit. Big game fish are bony fish such as tuna, tarpon. In North America, anglers fish also for common snook, redfish, salmon, trout, bass, pike, catfish, walleye, the smallest fish are called panfish, because they can fit in a normal cooking pan. Examples are crappies, perch, rock bass, bluegill and sunfish, panfish are often hunted by younger anglers. In the United Kingdom, game fish refers to Salmonids – that is, salmon, trout, other freshwater fish are called coarse fish. Some popular game fish have been transported worldwide, rainbow trout, for instance, can now be found nearly anywhere that the climate is appropriate, from their original home on the Pacific Coast of North America to the mountains of southern Africa. As part of the catch and release practice encouraged to promote conservation, some of their goals are to improve the management of fisheries resources and to keep records on abundance, growth rates, age, migrations, and strain identification. Some well known tagging programs in the United States are the South Carolina Marine Game Fish Tagging Program, the South Carolina Marine Game Fish Tagging Program began in 1974 and it is now the largest public tagging program in the Southeastern United States. Anglers are trained and then receive a tag kit with tags, applicator, when they tag a fish, anglers use a reply postcard they receive in advance to send the information on the tag number, tag date, location, species, and size. This program issues anglers who tag and release 30 or more species within a year a conservation award. When an angler recaptures a tagged fish, he then should report the recapture, if possible the tag number and the mailing address should be reported along with the location and date of the recapture as well with the measurement of the fish. The objective is to provide biologists with the information to determine growth rate through an accurate measurement. The Virginia Game Fish Tagging Program started operations in 1995 and keeps records on recaptured fish since then and this is an annual program that starts in January and it is limited to 160 anglers. Anglers receive training workshops in February and March, the official guide to world salt and freshwater fish records is the World Record Game Fishes, published annually by the International Game Fish Association. The IGFA maintains records for nearly 400 species around the world, the records are categorised, with separate records for juniors, for the type of tackle and line used, for fly fishing, and locality records
18.
PubMed Identifier
–
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval, from 1971 to 1997, MEDLINE online access to the MEDLARS Online computerized database primarily had been through institutional facilities, such as university libraries. PubMed, first released in January 1996, ushered in the era of private, free, home-, the PubMed system was offered free to the public in June 1997, when MEDLINE searches via the Web were demonstrated, in a ceremony, by Vice President Al Gore. Information about the journals indexed in MEDLINE, and available through PubMed, is found in the NLM Catalog. As of 5 January 2017, PubMed has more than 26.8 million records going back to 1966, selectively to the year 1865, and very selectively to 1809, about 500,000 new records are added each year. As of the date,13.1 million of PubMeds records are listed with their abstracts. In 2016, NLM changed the system so that publishers will be able to directly correct typos. Simple searches on PubMed can be carried out by entering key aspects of a subject into PubMeds search window, when a journal article is indexed, numerous article parameters are extracted and stored as structured information. Such parameters are, Article Type, Secondary identifiers, Language, publication type parameter enables many special features. As these clinical girish can generate small sets of robust studies with considerable precision, since July 2005, the MEDLINE article indexing process extracts important identifiers from the article abstract and puts those in a field called Secondary Identifier. The secondary identifier field is to store numbers to various databases of molecular sequence data, gene expression or chemical compounds. For clinical trials, PubMed extracts trial IDs for the two largest trial registries, ClinicalTrials. gov and the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number Register, a reference which is judged particularly relevant can be marked and related articles can be identified. If relevant, several studies can be selected and related articles to all of them can be generated using the Find related data option, the related articles are then listed in order of relatedness. To create these lists of related articles, PubMed compares words from the title and abstract of each citation, as well as the MeSH headings assigned, using a powerful word-weighted algorithm. The related articles function has been judged to be so precise that some researchers suggest it can be used instead of a full search, a strong feature of PubMed is its ability to automatically link to MeSH terms and subheadings. Examples would be, bad breath links to halitosis, heart attack to myocardial infarction, where appropriate, these MeSH terms are automatically expanded, that is, include more specific terms. Terms like nursing are automatically linked to Nursing or Nursing and this important feature makes PubMed searches automatically more sensitive and avoids false-negative hits by compensating for the diversity of medical terminology. The My NCBI area can be accessed from any computer with web-access, an earlier version of My NCBI was called PubMed Cubby
19.
FishBase
–
FishBase is a global species database of fish species. 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. The site has about 700,000 unique visitors per month, 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 it can be particularly difficult for people in developing countries who need such information. Such a database would be useful if the data has also been standardised and validated. Pauly recruited Rainer Froese, and the beginnings of a software database along these lines was encoded in 1988 and this database, initially confined to tropical fish, became the prototype for FishBase. FishBase was subsequently extended to cover all finfish, and was launched on the Web in August 1996 and it is now the largest and most accessed online database for fish in the world. In 1995 the first CD-ROM was released as FishBase 100, subsequent CDs have been released annually. The software runs on Microsoft Access which operates only on Microsoft Windows, FishBase covers adult finfish, but does not detail the early and juvenile stages of fish. In 1999 a complimentary database, called LarvalBase, went online under the supervision of Bernd Ueberschär. It covers ichthyoplankton and the stage of fishes, with detailed data on fish eggs and larvae, fish identification. Given FishBases success, there was a demand for a database covering forms of life other than finfish. This resulted, in 2006, in the birth of SeaLifeBase, altogether, there are about 300,000 known species in this category. As awareness of FishBase has grown among fish specialists, it has attracted over 1,700 contributors and collaborators, since 2000 FishBase has been supervised by a consortium consisting of nine international institutions. The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, functions as the coordinating body, Catalog of Fishes List of online encyclopedias Bailly N Why there may be discrepancies in the assessment of scientific names between the Catalog of Fishes and FishBase Version 2,6 May 2010. Bailly N, Reyes Jr R, Atanacio R and Froese R Simple Identification Tools in FishBase In, Nimis PL and Vignes Lebbe R. Tools for Identifying Biodiversity, Progress and Problems, pages 31–36. Froese R The science in Fishbase In, Villy Christensen and Jay Maclean Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries, A Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Froese R and Pauly D FishBase 2000, concepts, design and data sources ICLARM, Philippines. Froese R and Pauly D Fishbase as a tool for comparing the life patterns of flatfish Netherlands Journal of Sea Research,32
20.
Wikidata
–
Wikidata is a collaboratively edited knowledge base operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is intended to provide a source of data which can be used by Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia. This is similar to the way Wikimedia Commons provides storage for files and access to those files for all Wikimedia projects. Wikidata is powered by the software Wikibase, Wikidata is a document-oriented database, focused on items. Each item represents a topic and is identified by a number, prefixed with the letter Q—for example. This enables the basic information required to identify the topic the item covers to be translated without favouring any language, information is added to items by creating statements. Statements take the form of pairs, with each statement consisting of a property. The creation of the project was funded by donations from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, at this time, only the first phase was available. Historically, a Wikipedia article would include a list of links, being links to articles on the same topic in other editions of Wikipedia. Initially, Wikidata was a repository of interlanguage links. No Wikipedia language editions were able to access Wikidata, so they needed to continue to maintain their own lists of interlanguage links, on 14 January 2013, the Hungarian Wikipedia became the first to enable the provision of interlanguage links via Wikidata. This functionality was extended to the Hebrew and Italian Wikipedias on 30 January, to the English Wikipedia on 13 February, on 23 September 2013, phase 1 went live on Wikimedia Commons. The first aspects of the second phase were deployed on 4 February 2013, the values were initially limited to two data types, with more data types to follow later. The first new type, string, was deployed on 6 March, the ability of the various language editions of Wikipedia to access data added to Wikidata as part of phase two was rolled out progressively between 27 March and 25 April 2013. On 16 September 2015, Wikidata began allowing so-called arbitrary access, for example, in the past the article about Berlin you could not access data about Germany, but with arbitrary access it could. On 27 April 2016 arbitrary access was activated on Wikimedia Commons, phase 3 will involve database querying and the creation of lists based on data stored on Wikidata. As of October 2016 two tools for querying Wikidata were available, AutoList and PetScan, additionally to a public SPARQL endpoint, there is concern that the project is being influenced by lobbying companies, PR professionals and search engine optimizers. As of December 2015, according to Wikimedia statistics, half of the information in Wikidata is unsourced, another 30% is labeled as having come from Wikipedia, but with no indication as to which article
21.
Encyclopedia of Life
–
The Encyclopedia of Life is a free, online collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It is compiled from existing databases and from contributions by experts and non-experts throughout the world and it aims to build one infinitely expandable page for each species, including video, sound, images, graphics, as well as text. In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, respectively. The project was led by Jim Edwards and the development team by David Patterson. Today, participating institutions and individual donors continue to support EOL through financial contributions, EOL went live on 26 February 2008 with 30,000 entries. The site immediately proved to be popular, and temporarily had to revert to demonstration pages for two days when it was overrun by traffic from over 11 million views it received. The site relaunched on 5 September 2011 with a redesigned interface, eOLv2 is redesigned to enhance usability and encourage contributions and interactions among users. The product is also internationalized with interfaces provided for English, German, Spanish, French, Galician, Serbian, Macedonian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian language speakers. On 16 January 2014, EOL launched TraitBank, a searchable, open digital repository for organism traits, measurements, interactions, information about many species is already available from a variety of sources, in particular about the megafauna. Gathering currently available data on all 1.9 million species will take about 10 years, as of September 2011, EOL had information on more than 700,000 species available, along with more than 600,000 photos and millions of pages of scanned literature. The initial focus has been on living species but will later include extinct species, as the discovery of new species is expected to continue, the encyclopedia will grow continuously. The goal of EOL is to serve as a resource for the public, enthusiastic amateurs, educators, students. The Encyclopedia of Life has content partners around the world who share information through the EOL platform, including Wikipedia and its interface is translated at translatewiki. net. The Encyclopedia of Life – Introductory video on YouTube from May 2007
22.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
–
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by institutions from around the world. Data available through the GBIF portal are primarily distribution data on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes for the world, the mission of the Global Biodiversity information Facility is to facilitate free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide to underpin sustainable development. ABCD Schema Atlas of Living Australia Darwin Core Global biodiversity Pacific Biodiversity Information Forum GBIF website Short description of GBIF
23.
INaturalist
–
Observations may be added via the website or from a mobile application. The observations provide valuable data to a variety of scientific research projects, museums, botanic gardens, parks. Users of iNaturalist have contributed four million observations since its founding in 2008. INaturalist. org began in 2008 as a UC Berkeley School of Information Masters final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, Nate Agrin and Ken-ichi Ueda continued work on the site with Sean McGregor, a web developer. In 2011, Ueda began collaboration with Scott Loarie, a fellow at Stanford University. Ueda and Loarie are the current co-directors of iNaturalist. org, on April 24,2014 iNaturalist. org merged with the California Academy of Sciences In 2014, iNaturalist celebrated its one millionth observation. The iNaturalist platform is based on crowdsourcing of data, users of iNaturalist can submit observations of organisms in the form of photographs, sound recordings, or visual sightings. Observations are either casual or research grade, and research grade observations are incorporated into online databases to be utilizable for scientists, iNaturalist is the preferred application for crowd-sourced biodiversity data in Mexico. As of 28 January 2017, the iNaturalist community consisted of almost 400,000 users contributing over 4,300,000 observations of plants, animals, users have created and contributed to over 9000 different projects, spanning hundreds of themes. Project examples include taxa- and location-specific bioblitzes, roadkill observations, animal tracks, the US National Park Service partnered with iNaturalist to record observations from the 2016 National Parks BioBlitz. That project exceeded 100,000 observations in August 2016, list of citizen science projects Official website iNaturalist on Vimeo Introducing iNaturalist by Suzanne Cadwell
24.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System
–
The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is an American partnership of federal agencies designed to provide consistent and reliable information on the taxonomy of biological species. The database draws from a community of taxonomic experts. Primary content staff are housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the primary focus of ITIS is North American species, but many groups are worldwide and ITIS continues to collaborate with other international agencies to increase its global coverage. ITIS provides a reference database of scientific and common names for species. As of May 2016, it contains over 839,000 scientific names, synonyms, and common names for terrestrial, marine, data presented in ITIS are considered public information, and may be freely distributed and copied, though appropriate citation is requested. ITIS is frequently used as the de facto source of data in biodiversity informatics projects. It presents the names in a classification that contains author, date, distributional. In addition, common names are available through ITIS in the official languages of the Americas. ITIS and its partner, Species 2000, cooperate to annually produce the Catalogue of Life. The Catalogue of Lifes goal was to complete the global checklist of 1.9 million species by 2011. As of May 2012, the Catalogue of Life has reached 1.4 million species—a major milestone in its quest to complete the first up-to-date comprehensive catalogue of all living organisms, ITIS and the Catalogue of Life are core to the Encyclopedia of Life initiative announced May 2007. EOL will be largely on various Creative Commons licenses. The newer material has been checked to higher standards of taxonomic credibility, biological taxonomy is not fixed, and opinions about the correct status of taxa at all levels, and their correct placement, are constantly revised as a result of new research. Many aspects of classification remain a matter of scientific judgment, the ITIS database is updated to take account of new research as it becomes available, and the information it yields is likely to represent a fair consensus of modern taxonomic opinion. Records within ITIS include information about how far it has been possible to check and its information should be checked against other sources where these are available, and against the primary research scientific literature where possible
25.
National Center for Biotechnology Information
–
The National Center for Biotechnology Information is part of the United States National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The NCBI is located in Bethesda, Maryland and was founded in 1988 through legislation sponsored by Senator Claude Pepper, the NCBI houses a series of databases relevant to biotechnology and biomedicine and is an important resource for bioinformatics tools and services. Major databases include GenBank for DNA sequences and PubMed, a database for the biomedical literature. Other databases include the NCBI Epigenomics database, all these databases are available online through the Entrez search engine. NCBI is directed by David Lipman, one of the authors of the BLAST sequence alignment program. He also leads a research program, including groups led by Stephen Altschul, David Landsman, Eugene Koonin, John Wilbur, Teresa Przytycka. NCBI is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data. org, NCBI has had responsibility for making available the GenBank DNA sequence database since 1992. GenBank coordinates with individual laboratories and other databases such as those of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Since 1992, NCBI has grown to other databases in addition to GenBank. The NCBI assigns a unique identifier to each species of organism, the NCBI has software tools that are available by WWW browsing or by FTP. For example, BLAST is a sequence similarity searching program, BLAST can do sequence comparisons against the GenBank DNA database in less than 15 seconds. RAG2/IL2RG The NCBI Bookshelf is a collection of freely accessible, downloadable, some of the books are online versions of previously published books, while others, such as Coffee Break, are written and edited by NCBI staff. BLAST is a used for calculating sequence similarity between biological sequences such as nucleotide sequences of DNA and amino acid sequences of proteins. BLAST is a tool for finding sequences similar to the query sequence within the same organism or in different organisms. It searches the query sequence on NCBI databases and servers and post the results back to the browser in chosen format. Input sequences to the BLAST are mostly in FASTA or Genbank format while output could be delivered in variety of such as HTML, XML formatting. HTML is the output format for NCBIs web-page. Entrez is both indexing and retrieval system having data from sources for biomedical research
26.
World Register of Marine Species
–
The World Register of Marine Species is a database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms. The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scientific specialists on each group of organism and these taxonomists control the quality of the information, which is gathered from malacological journals and several regional and taxon-specific databases. WoRMS maintains valid names of all organisms, but also provides information on synonyms. It will be a task to maintain the registry, as new species are constantly being discovered and described by scientists. In addition, the nomenclature and taxonomy of existing species is often corrected or changed as new research is constantly being published, WoRMS was founded in 2008 and grew out of the European Register of Marine Species. WoRMS has established formal agreements with other biodiversity projects, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. In 2008, WoRMS stated that it hoped to have a record of all marine species completed by 2010. As of November 2016, WoRMS contained listings for 242,562 valid marine species and their goal is to have a listing for each of the approximately 240,000 marine species. Census of Marine Life Ocean Biogeographic Information System Catalog of Fishes World Register of Marine Species
. PMID 22947621.
