= Some Websites

Some websites now are available and they are shown in Table-3. Many of these websites are still under construction. But, they will provide a general picture of the TDA. For illustration, some of these websites are described as follows.

= The fish database in Taiwan

The total number of fishes in Taiwan has accumulated to 263 families and 2,675 species. This number does not include some unidentified species, especially deep-sea fishes. The curatorial and distributional data of these Taiwanese fish have been integrated into a single database that can be accessed interactively on the Internet at http://fishdb.sinica.edu.tw. This database includes the following contents:

1. Basic information and a specimen photo of each species - One can make inquires by fish name, body contours, or fish pictures, etc. A list of newly added species and the reasons for changing scientific names are also provided.

2. Distributional database – Though the GIS, user can check the actual distribution area of each species on the map (in a grid system, 10’each) or obtain a list of species for each grid.

3. Bibliographic database – at present, 274 taxonomic, ecological, or distributional articles on fish in Taiwan have been collected since 1990 including local Chinese articles.

4. Curatorial database - One can inquire about the approximately 5,000 lots and 2,000 species of fish specimens deposited at the Institute of Zoology, Academia Sinica and 1,000 of species deposited at the National Museum of Marian Science and Technology.

5. Chinese fish names of the world fishes – The Chinese names of 26,600 valid species in Wu et al. (1990) are provided for promoting the unification of Chinese fish names.

6. Miscellaneous – New version of errata of “Fish of Taiwan” (Shen et al. 1993), Chinese character fonts and pronunciations of characters with “fish” radical are furnished.

The above regional database of Taiwanese fishes can link and access fish data for each species in the global fish database, FishBase of ICLARM at http://www.fishbase.org. Though the collaboration with FishBase, the users of Species 2000 can also get the most up to dated data on Taiwanese fishes via FishBase (http://www.sp2000.org). It is believed that the establishment of a global biodiversity information exchange system, like “GBIF” (Global Biodiversities Information Facilities) or “ BioNet–International” (the global network for taxonomy) all will need local database workers to provide regional database with content so that the goal of information sharing throughout the world can be reached.