[Coral-List] 2. Taxonomy issues (Ivan Murillo)

Íris Sampaio irisfs at gmail.com
Fri Jan 4 12:34:47 EST 2013


Dear Ivan,

First of all you should identify which taxa you intend to identify. For
fish the Fishbase, for Algae the Algaebase, for sponges the World Porifera
Database, for hexacorals the Hexacorallians of the world, etc. For general
checking I would recommend you WORMS (World  Register of Marine Species)
where you can validate the species name and be able to identify synonyms.
Each taxa as an expert associated to it and you can also know or contact
them.
Then, you should identify the type of data that you are interested in (e.g.
morphological characters, sequences?).
Regarding sequences I would recommend you BOLD Systems (
http://www.barcodinglife.com/) that associates the morphological characters
of specimens and photos with the genetic data. It also imports from and
exports data to Genbank.

However you should have into account that the original description of each
species should be checked. The Biodiversity Library has a lot of ancient
literature.

Depending on your area of study you can find also local databases. Do not
forget to put a critic eye on them because there are a lot of errors in
each database. For some taxa you will find them really incomplete.

Good luck!

King regards,


Message: 2
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2013 14:07:51 -0500
From: Ivan Murillo <dartomes at gmail.com>
Subject: [Coral-List] Taxonomy issues
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Message-ID:
        <CAHaq=gKXLQiRtZAuwXQaTJ1KNGahgg+hnJMOrS9xCOa60cHCvA at mail.gmail.com>
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Dear coral listers,



Currently I have a dilemma about which database to use when identifying
organisms. In the case of phytoplankton, Algaebase seems to be a good tool
due to it?s continuously updated. However, I would like to know (based on
phylogenetic, taxonomy, molecular knowledge, etc) which criteria should I
consider when choosing a database to work with?



Thanks,



Iv?n

-- 
Íris Sampaio
Master Student of Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution
CIBIO - Centro de Investigação de Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos
Faculty of Sciences - University of Porto
Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas,
4485-661 Vairão, Vila do Conde, Portugal

E-mail: irisfs at gmail.com


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