Linking the Taiwan Fish Database to the Global Database

Under the support of the National Digital Archive Program (NDAP), basic species information about most Taiwanese fishes, including their morphology, ecology, distribution, specimens with photos, and literatures have been compiled into the “Fish Database of Taiwan” (http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw). We expect that the all Taiwanese fish species databank (RSD), with 2800+ species, and the digital “Fish Fauna of Taiwan” will be completed in 2007. Underwater ecological photos and video images for all 2,800+ fishes are quite difficult to achieve but will be collected continuously in the future. In the last year of NDAP, we have successfully integrated all fish specimen data deposited at 7 different institutes in Taiwan as well as their collection maps on the Google Map and Google Earth. Further, the database also provides the pronunciation of Latin scientific names and transliteration of Chinese common names by referring to the Romanization system for all Taiwanese fishes (2,902 species in 292 families so far). The Taiwanese fish species checklist with Chinese common/vernacular names and specimen data has been updated periodically and provided to the global FishBase as well as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) through the national portal of the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF). Thus, Taiwanese fish data can be queried and browsed on the WWW. For contributing to the “Barcode of Life” and “All Fishes” international projects, alcohol-preserved specimens of more than 1,800 species and cryobanking tissues of 800 species have been accumulated at RCBAS in the past two years. Through this close collaboration between local and global databases, “The Fish Database of Taiwan” now attracts more than 250,000 visitors and achieves 5 million hits per month. We believe that this local database is becoming an important resource for education, research, conservation, and sustainable use of fish in Taiwan.