Transcript Document

THE INFORMATION SYSTEM ON THE MARINE ANIMALS
COLLECTION IN THE ZOOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF RAS
I.S. SMIRNOV, E.P. VORONINA, A.L. LOBANOV & A.V. NEYELOV
The Zoological Institute (ZIN) in St.
Petersburg houses one of the world's
largest zoological collections.
The marine invertebrate collection
contains over 100 thousand samples
of 26 thousand species.
The ichthyological collection contains over 160
thousand catalogued specimens of about 8700
species of marine and freshwater fishes of the
world fauna.
The development of the electronic
databases started at the Zoological
Institute in 1987, firstly on marine
invertebrates, and then, in 1991, on fish.
This is Amstrad
1640 DD – our
first PC at the
Zoological
Institute.
The information retrieval system “OCEAN” designed at the Zoological
Institute consists of 4 main tables: the taxonomic table containing the name
and nomenclature of taxa, the station table including the data of field books,
the collection table of museum collections, and bibliographic table.
In the process of organizing the faunistic and
ecological data and Information systems, two
main problems appeared:
1) input and use of scientific names, especially
synonyms; and
2) standardization of geographical data.
• The first problem is being solved using the
classificators (special taxonomic
databases) of scientific names of animals
based on the user-friendly and periodically
updated ZOOCOD standard, popular
among the Russian institutions dealing
with the biodiversity research.
A structure of a ZOOCOD’s classificator
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------GENUS
LATNAM SYN RANCOD
ABBR
SYSCOD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Animalia
1 AN
100
Arthropoda
10 AR
110
Crustacea
20 CR
120
Insecta
20 IN
130
Coleoptera
40 INCO
13010
Diptera
40 INDI
13013
Chordata
10 CH
140
Mammalia
20 MA
150
Primates
40 MAPR
15010
Pongidae
50 MAPRPO
15010100
Hylobatidae = 50 MAPRHY
15010100
Gorilla
70 MAPRPOGOR
150101001000
Gorilla
gorilla
90 MAPRPOGORGOR
1501010010001000
Pan
70 MAPRPOPAN
150101001010
Hominidae
50 MAPRHO
15010105
Homo
70 MAPRHOHOM
150101051000
Homo
sapiens
90 MAPRHOHOMSAP
1501010510001000
Homo
sapiens recens
94 MAPRHOHOMSAPRE 150101051000100010
Standard of hierarchy of taxonomic categories,
codes of their ranks and rank appropriate endings used in
the Zoological Institute
Coordinates and the developed geographical
information system were used to solve the
second problem.
• The Zoological Institute continues to
participate in the 4 international projects on
creation of marine invertebrates and fish
databases:
• CNAMF - Computer Network for Arctic Marine Fauna
(NATO) –
(1999-2000)
• HELCOM project “Invasive
Species of the Baltic Sea” – (2003- ) see poster
• FishBASE –
(2004 - )
• ArctCoML - Arctic Census of Marine Life (2004 -)
The ichthyological part of the taxonomic table
contains about 5700 records; all high-level taxa
including families, species of fish and fish-like
animals of the Antarctic Region,
Pleuronectiformes and some families of
Scorpaeniformes of the World. It is exhibited as
a list on the web site of the Zoological Institute.
Databases on marine invertebrates now contain more than
40000 station records from more than 175 expeditions
and the information on chitons, bivalves and brittle
stars collections.
International projects on the treatment of
databases and information systems sharing
biodiversity information on a global scale are
developing. Data input in these projects
usually is based on Latin symbols, but not on
Cyrillic. This reduces the amount information
on the original labels, hand-written in foreign
languages, e.g. Russian.
The information system “OCEAN” provides
input of data and different queries using
Cyrillic symbols along with the Latin ones.
Advantages of the IRS “Ocean“
(in comparison with “Artedian”)
• 1. Station codes are generated automatically.
• 2. The important fields are filled in Russian in addition
English (vessel and others).
• 3. Leading spaces are deleted automatically.
• 4. There are fields for GEAR, STATION NUMBER
which provide an opportunity to verify location with a
route table for marine expeditions).
• 5. There is EXPEDITION field (collectors may be
different).
• 6. All geographical fields can be filled in with the help
of dictionaries.
• 7. The number of specimens is not an obligatory field,
but calculated one.
Advantages of the IRS “Artedian“
(in comparison with “Ocean”)
• 1. Additional fields are designed for freshwater
stations (everything concerning land).
• 2. By default more fields describing the object
can be filled in comparison to the other program.
• 3. The collectors are treated in separate fields.
• 4. The IRS conforms to the Darwin Core in
coordinates notation (degrees, minutes and
seconds separately) and in treatment of land
stations data (attached to lakes, rivers, states,
provinces etc.)
It is necessary to study the experiences of
different teams and attempt to create not ideal
but optimal system for input and treatment of
marine data.
The majority of the Zoological Institute specimens were collected by wellknown Russian as well as foreign expeditions. Route and station data of
only few expeditions were published in special issues and for many years
these works were not available to specialists. Many other expeditions
produced only handwritten diaries.
Name and abbreviation of Exp.
Date
Exp. for Scientific and Fishery Investigations near
the Murman (ESFIM)
1880-1915
“Albatross” Exp.
1888-1906
Spitsbergen Exp.
1899-1901
Russian Polar Exp. (RPE)
1900-1902
Novaya Zemlya Exp.
1901-1935
Far East Exp. (FEE)
1908-1915
Hydrographic Exp. East Ocean (HEEO)
1908-1927
Kuril-Sakhalin Exp. (KSE)
1947-1949
Soviet-Chinese Exp. (SCE)
1956-1959
Soviet Antarctic Exp. (SAE)
1956-1989
“Polarstern” Exp.
1972-1998
The development of an international expedition
database would be very interesting historically and
useful in standardizing future input of collection data.
Name and abbreviation of Exp.
Date
Exp. for Scientific and Fishery Investigations near
the Murman (ESFIM)
1880-1915
“Albatross” Exp.
1888-1906
Spitsbergen Exp.
1899-1901
Russian Polar Exp. (RPE)
1900-1902
Novaya Zemlya Exp.
1901-1935
Far East Exp. (FEE)
1908-1915
Hydrographic Exp. East Ocean (HEEO)
1908-1927
Kuril-Sakhalin Exp. (KSE)
1947-1949
Soviet-Chinese Exp. (SCE)
1956-1959
Soviet Antarctic Exp. (SAE)
1956-1989
“Polarstern” Exp.
1972-1998
Thank you very much!