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

[Arthur Chapman]

Karen mentioned several Australian sites

I would like to add a few more to add some variation.  They have varying 
rols and quality, but are useful sites.

1. SPRAT - Species Profiles and Threats (ERIN Unit Department of the 
Environment)
    http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/sprat.pl

2. Brisbane Insects and Spiders - a private site
    http://www.geocities.com/pchew_brisbane/

3. Find a Spider Guide for Australian Spiders (University of Southern 
Queensland)
    http://www.usq.edu.au/spider/index.htm

4. Frogs of Queensland
    http://frogs.org.au/frogs/of/Queensland/

5. Australian Ants Online
    http://www.ento.csiro.au/science/ants/default.htm

A non-Australian one

Bug Guide.net  http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740

Cheers

Arthur


Roger Hyam wrote:
> 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.
>
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