- Title
- Atlas of Southern African freshwater fishes
- Title
- Smithiana Monograph no.2
- Creator
- Scott, L E P
- Creator
- Skelton, P H
- Creator
- Booth, A J
- Creator
- Verheust, L
- Creator
- Dooley, J
- Creator
- Harris, R
- Subject
- Freshwater fishes -- South Africa
- Subject
- Freshwater fishes -- Africa, Southern
- Subject
- Freshwater fishes -- Africa, Southern -- Identification
- Date Issued
- 2006
- Date
- 2006
- Type
- text
- Type
- book
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/199097
- Identifier
- vital:46068
- Description
- Worldwide concern over the loss of biological diversity during the past decade has provided the impetus for the development of biodiversity databases and biological atlas projects in order to make information accessible. This Geographic Information Systems-based Atlas of Southern African Freshwater Fishes is the first of its kind for fishes in Africa and, as such, can be seen as contributing towards this global trend of consolidation and refining of biodiversity information. The technological advances made in computing systems over the past decade have facilitated the extraction and utilisation of much of the untapped information in museum collections. The size of most natural history collections had tended to prohibit any comprehensive applied use of the specimens on a large scale, but the computerisation of these collections has proved to be an invaluable tool to systematists, taxonomists and ecologists, by allowing faster and more efficient access to specimen record data of interest. With the automation of many biological databases, public attention has been brought to their potential contribution to biodiversity studies and conservation efforts around the world. The application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the field of southern African ichthyology and freshwater fisheries management has been limited, until now, by the lack of good-quality, comprehensive data sets, adequate budgets and GIS skills. Sophisticated investigations of fish distributions for conservation and management purposes need a powerful computing platform. This is realised in the Atlas of Southern African Freshwater Fishes, which has been tested and used for biogeographic analysis in the southern African region. The atlas was established using specimen records from nineteen museum collections, and currently contains 35145 geo-referenced specimen records, collected between 1885 and 2000 in eleven countries of southern Africa, which represent 254 fish species from 37 families. The Atlas of Southern African Freshwater Fishes was developed with the objective of being a dynamic, powerful information system. It has been constructed to allow the import of additional information at any stage, and it is designed to be as accessible and as user-friendly as current technology allows. This Atlas is the product of the successful integration of fish distributional information with other spatial data layers to provide a new tool for the study of freshwater fish in southern Africa.
- Format
- 320 pages
- Format
- Publisher
- South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB)
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Smithiana Monograph
- Relation
- Scott, L. E., Skelton, P. H., Booth, A. J., Verheust, L., Harris, R., & Dooley, J. (2006). Atlas of southern African freshwater fishes. Smithiana Monograph No. 4, 495 pp
- Relation
- Smithiana Monograph number 2 0868103985
- Rights
- NRF-SAIAB
- Rights
- Apart from citations for the purposes of research or review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form, mechanical or electronic, without prior permission in writing from SAIAB
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