Fishes of Texas Project (FoTX) Database - Darwin Core

Study Extent

Our study area includes Texas and shared drainage basins going into neighbor states, Colorado, and the Gulf of Mexico (north of a line drawn from the eastern edge of Louisiana to the southern edge of Tamaulipas). Data were obtained based on database searches or personal requests for data from that area. In many cases provider data lacked the data fields to allow discovery of those records, in which case we requested data from larger geographic areas (eg. country). All records that were acquired are provided in the database, but only those in our study area have received the full processing efforts (georeferencing, suspect flagging, specimen examination, date corrections etc).

Sampling

The Fishes of Texas Project is a data acquisition and improvement project and thus includes data collected by others using various means. More recent funding has allowed the Fishes of Texas Project team to collect specimens from data gaps detected in the database using various collection methods. See our documentation to learn more: http://www.fishesoftexas.org/documentation/

Quality Control

Records from many disparate sources have been brought into a common format and standardized (taxa names, dates, and collector names in particular) allowing them to be queried in a single database. Localities have been georeferenced (including error estimate) if possible. These steps allowed us to map the records of each species and detect spatial and temporal outliers, which we flagged as "suspect". Early versions of the database were strictly specimen based and we've made extensive efforts to find specimens that we flagged and examine them to correct determination errors. See our documentation to learn more: http://www.fishesoftexas.org/documentation/

Method steps

1. After data were acquired, either directly from source or via online data aggregator, they were (1) re-formatted; (2) georeferenced to coordinates with an error radius estimate (those then determined to be in our study area received the most complete data standardization); (3) standardized (when possible) taxa to AFS Common and Scientific Names of Fishes or the GBIF backbone; (4) standardized collector names when possible; (5) standardized dates to begin and end dates; (6) flagged records that we thought had erroneous data as "suspect" records; (7) examined "suspect" specimens, which usually turn out to be mis-identifications. See our documentation to learn more: http://www.fishesoftexas.org/documentation/

All fish taxa

1. Actinopterygii
   rank: class
2. Agnatha
   rank: class
3. Chondrichthyes
   rank: class
4. Osteichthyes
   rank: class

Our study area includes Texas and shared drainage basins going into neighbor states, Colorado, and the Gulf of Mexico (north of a line drawn from the southeastern edge of Louisiana to the southeastern edge of Tamaulipas). Data were obtained by database searches or personal requests for data from that area. In many cases provider databases lacked the data fields to allow discovery of those records, in which case we requested data from larger geographic areas (e.g. country). All records that were acquired are provided in the database, but only those in our study area have received the full processing efforts (georeferencing, suspect flagging, specimen examination, date corrections etc).