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; and2) 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.

• ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------• 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

A structure of a ZOOCOD’s classificator

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 well-known 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.

1972-1998“Polarstern” Exp.

Date Name and abbreviation of Exp.

1956-1989Soviet Antarctic Exp. (SAE)

1956-1959Soviet-Chinese Exp. (SCE)

1947-1949Kuril-Sakhalin Exp. (KSE)

1908-1927Hydrographic Exp. East Ocean (HEEO)

1908-1915Far East Exp. (FEE)

1901-1935Novaya Zemlya Exp.

1900-1902Russian Polar Exp. (RPE)

1899-1901Spitsbergen Exp.

1888-1906 “Albatross” Exp.

1880-1915Exp. for Scientific and Fishery Investigations near the Murman (ESFIM)

The development of an international expedition database would be very interesting historically and useful in standardizing future input of collection data.

1972-1998“Polarstern” Exp.

Date Name and abbreviation of Exp.

1956-1989Soviet Antarctic Exp. (SAE)

1956-1959Soviet-Chinese Exp. (SCE)

1947-1949Kuril-Sakhalin Exp. (KSE)

1908-1927Hydrographic Exp. East Ocean (HEEO)

1908-1915Far East Exp. (FEE)

1901-1935Novaya Zemlya Exp.

1900-1902Russian Polar Exp. (RPE)

1899-1901Spitsbergen Exp.

1888-1906 “Albatross” Exp.

1880-1915Exp. for Scientific and Fishery Investigations near the Murman (ESFIM)

Thank you very much!