Shorefishes of the Greater Caribbean online information system

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Programming of software of the two Neotropical Fish Websites.

PHP software programming that defines the structure and dynamic functioning of both websites was developed primarily by Eugenio Valdés of STRI’s Office of Information Technology, with additional programming of research-engine functionality by Carlos Caballero of the same office.

Funding

The Smithsonian Institution's Marine Science Network; the Smithsonian 2.0 fund; the Smithsonian's Office of the Under Secretary for Science (FY 2005); the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; the American Museum of Natural History; the Census of Marine Life ( Venezuelan chapter); Deanato de Investigación y Desarollo (Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela); Fundación La Salle de Ciencias Naturales (Venezuela); Petrobras Energia de Venezuela (LOCTI project) ; Environmental Defence Fund.

 

Government permissions for research, collecting and export of specimens

Panama - Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente and Autoridad de Recursos Acuáticos; Bahamas - Bahamas Fisheries Dept); Curacao - Agriculture and Fisheries Department; Florida - Division of Marine Fisheries Management, Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission; New York - New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Mississippi - Mississippi Department of Marine Resources; Texas - Texas Parks and Wildlife; South Carolina - Office of Fisheries Management; Venezuela - Oficina Nacional de Diviersidad Biológica (Ministerio del Poder Popular para el Ambiente), Instituto Socialista para la Pesca y la Acuicultura, the Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Agropecuaria (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Agricultura y Tierras), the Capitanias de Puertos de los Estados y de Falcón, Comandos de Guardacostas de La Guaira, de Punto Fijo (Edo. Falcón); the Dirección de Hidrografía y Navegación (Armada de la República Bolívariana de Venezuela).

 

Logistical support

STRI's research vessel, the R/V Urraca; NOAA Research Vessel Oregon II in the Gulf of Mexico (Chief Scientists Andre J Debose);) Venezuela: the Universidad Simón Bolívar (Unidad de Laboratorios, división de Ciencias Marinas (Sra Jackson Mendoza and Armando Castro); Centro de Submarinismo de la Universidad Simón Bolívar (CESUSIBO); Oscar Lasso and the Fundacción La Salle de Ciencias Naturales (FLASA) at the Museo de Historia Natural La Salle; the Estacion de Investigaciones Marinas de Margarita (Punta de Piedras y Cubagua), and its Research Vessel B/O Paraguachoa; Estación Experimental Las Piedras, Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (Edo. Falcón); lancha Carmen Josefina (AMMT 2241); Artesanal fishers from Isla de Margarita (Edo. Nueva Esparta), Macuro ( Edo. Sucre), La Gabarra ( Edo Zulia); Las Piedras y Zazárida (Edo Falcón), Ocumare de la Costa (Edo. Aragua). Bahamas: The Lee Stocking Island laboratory; Curacao Sea Aquarium, Substation Curacao and the submersible Curasub, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles (Adrian “Dutch” Schrier, Steve Piontek); USA: Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute; Indian River Field Laboratory ( Richard Paperno); Apalachicola Field Station, ( Richard Lehnert); South Florida Regional Laboratory, Marathon; Keys Marine Laboratory, Long Key Florida: Florida Museum of Natural History ( Rob Robins); Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, Marine Laboratory, Florida ( Steve Bortone); Dynasty Marine Associates Inc., Florida Keys (Forrest Young, Ben Daughtry, Heath Laetari, Frank Young); Grice Marine Laboratory, South Carolina ( Bill Roumillat); Texas A&M University Corpus Christi ( Frank Pezold, Luke Tornabene, Gregory Stunz); Hofstra University , New York; New York Department of Environmental Conservation (Tom Lake); SUNY Stony Brook, New York, ( John Maniscalco and Keith Dunton); Gulf Coast Research Laboratory , Mississippi ( Harriet Perry); the spanish research vessel  B/O Miguel Oliver  on a research cruise between Panama and Belize in January 2011 sponsored by  OSPESCA , with thanks to Mario Gonzalez Recinos; and Stanley Submarines and Karl Stanley at Roatan.

Public Aquaria in the USA, which allowed photography of fishes on exhibition:

Atlantis Marine World Aquarium, Riverhead, Long Island, NY (Todd Gardner & Chris Paparo;); the US National Aquaria, Washington DC and Baltimore MD (Andy Dehart); the Tennessee Aquarium , Chatanooga, TN; the Florida Aquarium, Tampa, FL; the Texas State Aquarium, Corpus Christi, TX; the Mote Aquarium, Sarasota, FL; the New York Aquarium, Coney Island, NY; the Georgia Aquarium , Atlanta, GA (Bruce Carlson); the South Carolina Aquarium, Charleston, SC (David Wilkins); the Riverbank Zoo, Columbia, SC (Jennifer Rawlings & Dave Berkley); the Ripley’s Aquarium , Myrtle Beach, SC (Joe Choromanski); the New Jersey State Aquarium, Camden, NJ, (Alejandro Vagelli); Aquarium of the Bay, San Francisco CA (Christine Schlager); Steinhart Aquarium, San Francisco, CA (Helen Taylor); Aquarium of the Pacific Long Beach, CA (Perry Hampton); Birch Aquarium Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, CA (Vincent Levesque); Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey Bay, CA (Stephany Stoner).

Assistance collecting fishes

Venezuela: Oscar Lasso-Alcalá, Luiz Rocha, Angel Fariñas, Humberto Ramirez. Panama: Benjamin Victor, Edgardo Ochoa, Luke Tornabene, Radford Arrindell. Curacao: Paul Hoetjes, Annmarie Kramer, Steve Piontek John Sparks, Carole Baldwin, Cristina Castillo, Lee Weigt, Amy Driskell. Bahamas: Lee Stocking Is Laboratory personnel, Naomi Delventhal. Texas: Luke Tornabene, David Boseto, Laura George, Ray Schmidt, Adriana Leiva, Frank Pezold, Diane Pitassy. Florida Luke Tornabene, Chris Anderson. New York: John Maniscalco, Todd Gardner & Chris Paparo.

Identification of specimens

Rad Arrindell, Carole Baldwin, Ricardo Betancur, Margaret Bradbury, Barbara Brown, John Caruso, Labbish Chao, Pat Colin, Bruce Collette, Paul Humann, John McCosker, Marcelo Carvalho, Ken Lindeman, Peter Moller, Tom Munroe, Frank Pezold, Jack Randall, Dave Smith, Luke Tornabene, Bill Smith-Vaniz, Ben Victor, Jeff Williams, David Smith, Richard Cooke and Rob Robins.

Databases of collection and location records

Many online databases of collection records from museums and universities were obtained from major online aggregators (Fishnet2, OBIS, GBIF, FishBase, iDigBio and Vertnet), as well as individual databases from the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the US National Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, INVEMAR (Colombia), the British Museum of Natural History, the Gulf of Mexico Fishnet, Marinespecies.org, the Museo de Historial Natural Marina de Colombia, the US Geological Survey (including its Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database), NOAA (including the NMFS-SE Fisheries Center Shark/Red Snapper bottom longline survey), the Swedish Museum of Natural History,  SEAMAP Pascagoula, the Sistema de Información sobre Biodiversidad de Colombia, the Universidad de Costa Rica, the Florida Museum of Natural History. In addition, Oscar Puebla provided data on the distributions of Hamlets (Hypoplectrus species). The database also includes location data from published taxonomic and checklist studies and each species has a list of publications that refer to it that can be accessed via the Literature tab in its species page. We used data from visual surveys of fishes by REEF.org (the Reef Environmental Education Foundation) and AGGRA (the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment) surveys of reef fishes. For REEF data we used only surveys by REEF “Experts” and for both REEF and AGGRA data we used data only from species that can readily be recognized and not easily confused with similar sympatric species. The database also includes location data derived from diver photographs of fishes taken at known locations, some hosted by iNaturalist, others available in individual photographer websites or obtained as a result of searches on the FaceBook pages of REEF TWA fishwatchers and the Blue Heron Bridge Dive Club.

Review and cleaning of location data: Source databases providing data to online aggregators were identified and data from databases known to provide unreliable or unverifiable data were excluded completely. Finally, all site records from all sources were mapped and inspected by DRR for consistency with known ranges wherever possible and suspect data were excluded. This cleaning process removed about 1/3 of all location records obtained by those methods before data were included in species maps on the website and used for construction of species lists and species richness calculations in the website’s Research Engine.

Use of Scientific and Popular literature for species descriptions

Besides the original descriptions of species, and reviews of genera in scientific journals we assembled the species descriptions and their distribution maps by drawing heavily on the following publications: Bohlke & Chaplin 1968 Fishes of the Bahamas and adjacent tropical waters; Carpenter 2002 FAO species identification guide for fishery purposes: the living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic, vols I-III . Castro 2011 The sharks of North America; Cervigón Los peces marinos de Venezuela vols I-VI (1991 – 2011); Colin 1975 Neon Gobies; Dawson 1985 Indo-Pacific pipefishes; FAO. Species catalogs for various taxonomic groups; Humann & DeLoach 2008 Reef fish identification: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (and the Reefnet CD derived from this book); Kells & Carpenter 2011, A field guide to coastal fishes from Maine to Texas; McEachran & Fechhelm Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico vols I (1998) & II (2005); Nelson et al 2004 Common and scientific names of fishes from the US, Canada and Mexico; Pietsch & Grobecker 1987 Frogfishes of the world; Randall 1996 Caribbean reef fishes; Robins, Ray & Douglas 1986 A field guide to the Atlantic coast fishes of North America; Sears Foundation Memoirs 1989: Memoir I: Fishes of the Western North Atlantic parts 1-9; Smith & Heemstra 1986 Smith’s Sea Fishes.

Images and illustrations

Images used in the website and associated mobile apps are drawn from 1000+ sources, including underwater photographers, image arising through research activities, particularly those arising from collections by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and deep-living species photographed during NOAA expeditions. Some images were also sourced from iNaturalist. The authors/owners of all images used are identified individually and credited on the large version of each image. The website’s Contributors Module includes three sections: (i) Principal Contributors: this section includes short bios of the authors and other ichthyologists who have made significant contributions to the information in the website. (ii) Major Image Contributors includes short bios of UW photographers who have contributed 100+ images to the website, with contact information and links to all the images provided by each person. (iii) All Image Contributors includes an alphabetical listing of the names of all image contributors, together with contact information and a link to all the images of each contributor.

Database preparation

Ernesto Peña managed the entire database. Assistance with data entry was provided by Rodnyel Arosemena, Alana Domingo, Evelyn Castillo, Susana Cussatti, Zoraida Jiménez, Ariel Magallon, Yarima Morato, Trinidad Pardo, Tania Romero, Ximena Shaw, Ramiro Solís, Derek Urrutia, Olga Vasquez and Ileana Hernández.