The Fish Database of Taiwan

Study Extent

The checklists mainly describes the wild fishes collected and found in Taiwan. The specimens cover the collections of adults, juveniles, and eggs of fishes. The morphological characteristics would be measured for every specimen as well as images would be taken, and then the specimen would be preserved in 95% alcohol and/or liquid Nitrogen for the records and further DNA barcoding analysis. The ecological photos and videos are taken under waters periodically, mainly for the coral reef and freshwater fishes. The distributional data (about 230 thousands entries) provide the occurrence records integrated from several different research projects, the subjects included deep-sea fishes, costal and economic fishes, demersal and benthic fishes, Dongsha Atoll fishes, freshwater and endemic fishes.

Sampling

The fish specimens and distributional data in The Fish Database of Taiwan source from many research projects conducted in the past and now, therefore depending on research subjects and purposes, specimen sampling is conducted by different methods and various fishery gears. For example, bottom and beam trawls are adopted for capturing marine demersal and benthic fishes, gillnets for economic fishes, fishing rods or falling gear for single specific species, light traps and zooplankton nets for fish eggs and larval fishes, fyt net for estuary fishes, electric fishing for river fishes, and even directly purchasing samples at fish markets. The data included in the Fish Database of Taiwan has been collected for more than 30 years even though the Database was late established in1990s, and the archiving is still ongoing.

Method steps

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Marine and fresh waters of Taiwan and the off-shore islands, including Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, Green Island, Lanyu, Liuqiu, Dongsha Atoll, and Spratly Islands