FoTX at Texas Chapter of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Corpus Christi

We just presented a poster at the Texas Chapter of the American Fisheries Society meeting in Corpus Christi on Feb 23-25, 2023. The abstract is below:

Fish occurrence data are widely scattered and mostly not published as data readily utilizable by computers. Global biodiversity aggregating services (e.g. GBIF, iDigBio, Fishnet) now aggregate and serve whatever data are submitted to them in the standard Darwin Core format, but their data are often replete with errors, minimally normalized, lacking content across standard fields, and served via generic mapping services lacking linkages to local and aquatic ecology-relevant resources (i.e., for fishes, they are ignorant of hydrography). In contrast, Fishes of Texas (FoTX) includes the same data and much more, including unpublished data from more diverse sources. FoTX’s rigorous quality-control measures, including specimen-based ID verifications, checking of legacy georeferencing, and flagging suspicious records has combined to greatly reduce errors. The custom FoTX website provides interactive exploration and data summarization, within the context of geopolitical and, now geographically-expanded hydrographic coverages, thus facilitating visualization and discovery of conservation-relevant histories and trends over time. The site allows viewing of derivative products, such as niche models, estimates of native ranges, checklists, data dashboards, and Native Fish Conservation Areas. The site also serves extensive image collections, collectors’ field notes, and links to digitized, formerly inaccessible unpublished agency reports. Finally, core FoTX data fields are also published to GBIF as Darwin Core to make it available to the world.

If you want to take our digital survey to help direct future efforts please do so here before the end of March: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMG92tdqwtmyNh8BzXxRY2_HoZrQVEVN9hyJ--XQ9TgqSCyA/viewform

See our poster here: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/117536/FoTX_for_TCAFS_Corpus_FINAL.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y