[Taxacom] Species Pages - where are the online descriptions?

[Robert Huber]

Hi Roger,

Stratigraphy.net's TaxonConcept has some species descriptions but mainly on
fossils see e.g.
http://taxonconcept.stratigraphy.net/taxon_details.php?taxid=2265 or
http://taxonconcept.stratigraphy.net/taxon_details.php?taxid=4526.

best regards,
Robert


2009/2/1 Roger Hyam <rogerhyam at mac.com>

> Hi,
>
> I am looking for websites that have good "Species Pages". By species
> page I mean (and this is my definition) a page that contains a
> description of the species and not a page that simply lists the
> nomenclature associated with the acceptance of a name. You could send
> the URL of a species page to a student who didn't know what the
> organism was and they could use it to confirm the identity of a
> specimen.
>
> An example of what I think of as a species page is  the Fishbase page
> for Gadus morhua (Atlantic Cod):
> http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=69
> There is a lot of information on this page and a description of the
> organism can be gleaned from it.
>
> This FloraBase page is another example:
> http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/26
> Very brief but attempts to define the taxon.
>
> Wikipedia has a good page for cod but there isn't a good taxon
> description so it is a borderline species page
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadus_morhua
>
> Catalogue of Life has a goal of producing a page for every species and
> it aims to do this by combining pre-existing data I believe but I
> wonder where this data is.
> Their page on badger comes from Arkive (http://www.arkive.org/) which
> is an imaging database http://eol.org/pages/328046 and their page on
> cod comes from Fishbase http://eol.org/pages/206692
>
> Pages I don't consider Species Pages are:
>
> Catalogue of Life has a page that comes from Fishbase but that chucks
> out the "useful" information and only maintains the nomenclature.
> http://www.catalogueoflife.org/show_species_details.php?record_id=5347829
>
> The ITIS page is similar to the CoL page
>
> http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=164712
>
> Likewise Fauna Europaea page for Meles meles (Badger) lacks a
> description because it is a nomenclatural database.
> http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=305312
>
> I'd like to build a list of sites offering "real" species page
> information - with descriptions. At the moment it seems like the major
> source of these pages are electronic versions of the literature. We
> have good descriptions in sources like eFloras.org
> http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=5&taxon_id=242417133
>  and I hope BHL will be a source. This is a shame as these pages
> typically lack large numbers of images and the possibility of
> including other media.
>
> I'd be grateful for any suggestions of sites that contain species
> pages (as per my definition).
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Roger
>
> BTW: I'd rather use the term "Taxon Page" as these things could apply
> at any rank but there seems to be a consensus to call them Species
> Pages no matter what rank they apply to and people are typically
> interested in species.
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
>
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The entire Taxacom Archive back to 1992 can be searched with either of
> these methods:
>
> http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> Or use a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>



-- 
Dr. Robert Huber,

WDC-MARE / PANGAEA - www.pangaea.de
Stratigraphy.net - www.stratigraphy.net
_____________________________________________
MARUM - Institute for Marine Environmental Sciences (location)
University Bremen
Leobener Strasse
POP 330 440
28359 Bremen
Phone ++49 421 218-65593, Fax ++49 421 218-65505
e-mail rhuber at wdc-mare.org