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We requested records from institutional donors regardless of date and include all records received including those without a date recorded. We do not maintain data on time of day of collection, but in some rare instances such data may be found in verbatim donor data.

Data

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Types

The project is based primarily on data that are "vouchered" by preserved specimens stored in museum collections (see Version 3.0, where we add non-vouchered data to the database). These data are the highest quality occurrence data available since they can be verified at any time by inspection of specimens that will persist indefinitely. Other data sources without vouchers are unverifiable. The ability to verify determinations is critical and our recent work towards correcting errors of determination in the Fishes of Texas Database illustrates the importance of museum specimens. Additionally, data backed by specimens are useful since those specimens can then be used for research in many fields of biological study.

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