Need Ecology/Comments on Biology section

Post by **Silurus** » 04 May 2003, 12:13

The form needs an ecology/comments on biology section, I think. While filling out data for Micronema bleekeri, I had information on migrations that had nowhere to go. The migrations are not necessarily tied to breeding, but I left them in that section for the lack of a better place to put them.
Is there somewhere where we could put information on the ecology, natural habitat, or biology (not pertaining to reproduction) of the fish?

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 04 May 2003, 12:19

How about I add a general notes and literature notes field? The literature notes field is already used for L-numbers and the discussion of Aqualog Vs DATZ.

Jools

Post by **Rusty** » 04 May 2003, 13:42

I also think a synonyms field would be useful.

Rusty

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 05 May 2003, 10:29

Rusty wrote:I also think a synonyms field would be useful.

Rusty

When I designed the database schema I thought long and hard about this one. Ultimately I decided against it for the simple reason that its ongoing maintainence would be a lot of work and detract from the time I could spend adding pictures and writing hobby level information.

The final (I believe) vindication of this was the inclusion of the fishbase links on a species by species basis. My thinking here was why duplicate this information when you can see it only a click away? Irrespective of the quality of the fishbase data, this is only going to improve over time. In the future (and its not far away) I beleive you will see a lot of this sort of thing and I want Planet to link to major scientific databases to pull out this sort of information rather than maintain it ourselves.

Jools

Post by **Dinyar** » 05 May 2003, 15:35

I think the real argument for a "Synonyms" field is that it would enable users to find the fish they are looking for even if they are not up-to-date on the latest terminology. What if I didn't know that Megalodoras irwini is now called Megalodoras uranoscopus? Short of going to FB, I wouldn't be able to find any info on PC.

This also raises the question of whether we could/should construct a multi-criteria search function for the C'log database. If not too technically challenging, I think this would be a very useful feature. E.g., someone was recently looking for cold water catfish on the Forum. AFAIK, while there's a temperature field in the C'log, the only way to find cold water cats is to search each record individually.

Finally, I agree with HH on the need for an "Ecology" field. This is one of the first things I'm interested in when learning about a new fish. Some time ago, when I did a dozen or so data submissions, I often ran across the problem of where to put ecology info, and tried to allocate it across the existing fields as best I could. "General" would be a poor substitute, especially if we want to work towards a built-in multi-criteria search function, which obviously would be most useful with specific fields.

To my mind -- and I'm just speaking for myself -- the C'log should be primarily about catfish, and secondarily about their aquarium husbandry, not the other way around. I think that in saying this, I'm saying the same thing Shane did when he said that he saw PC as bridging the worlds of fish hobbyists and scientists. There are lots of aquarium sites, then there's FB, but virtually nothing in between. IMO, PC's "market positioning" should be to fill that gap for Siluriformes.

Oh yes, one more thought, once the C'log data is filled in to a greater extent than at present, we should look at getting FB to link to PC, not just the other way around! That would create lots of new traffic and introduce a new market segment to PC, plus it would give PC a new legitimacy as the last web word on Siluriformes.

Dinyar

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 05 May 2003, 18:07

Dinyar wrote:I think the real argument for a "Synonyms" field is that it would enable users to find the fish they are looking for even if they are not up-to-date on the latest terminology. What if I didn't know that Megalodoras irwini is now called Megalodoras uranoscopus? Short of going to FB, I wouldn't be able to find any info on PC.

This also raises the question of whether we could/should construct a multi-criteria search function for the C'log database. If not too technically challenging, I think this would be a very useful feature. E.g., someone was recently looking for cold water catfish on the Forum. AFAIK, while there's a temperature field in the C'log, the only way to find cold water cats is to search each record individually.

Finally, I agree with HH on the need for an "Ecology" field. This is one of the first things I'm interested in when learning about a new fish. Some time ago, when I did a dozen or so data submissions, I often ran across the problem of where to put ecology info, and tried to allocate it across the existing fields as best I could. "General" would be a poor substitute, especially if we want to work towards a built-in multi-criteria search function, which obviously would be most useful with specific fields.

To my mind -- and I'm just speaking for myself -- the C'log should be primarily about catfish, and secondarily about their aquarium husbandry, not the other way around. I think that in saying this, I'm saying the same thing Shane did when he said that he saw PC as bridging the worlds of fish hobbyists and scientists. There are lots of aquarium sites, then there's FB, but virtually nothing in between. IMO, PC's "market positioning" should be to fill that gap for Siluriformes.

Oh yes, one more thought, once the C'log data is filled in to a greater extent than at present, we should look at getting FB to link to PC, not just the other way around! That would create lots of new traffic and introduce a new market segment to PC, plus it would give PC a new legitimacy as the last web word on Siluriformes.

Dinyar

Dinyar,

Never though of that, YES!, now that is a good reason to have a synonyms list. But who's going to type it in...

On the subject of the searchng, that is beyond my ken at the moment and will remain so until (I suspect) the whole shooting match is moved into an online database.

I'm not saying we are quite there yet but I see Planet Catfish as the best aquarium site on the web. Simple really, it's what all other sites will want to offer and be. In doing that I think we will fill a lot of gaps, not just those that exist between the hobby and science.

On the ecology front, I think the general notes field will have to suffice (or I could just rename it ecology and see what else we need notes for). I can just see spiralling new field requests in front of me that's all. You are slightly confusing fuzzy searching with specific matching. Specific matching would be "show me all the fish that can live at pH 6.0", fuzzy matching would be "show me all fast water fish from Africa". I'm sure I will get there, but as things presently stand we are years aways from either sort of thing.

But then, I'm only 31 years young.

Jools

Post by **Silurus** » 05 May 2003, 18:20

I can see the great problems in sorting out the synonyms (I'm not advocating that we not have it, just want to point out the problems).
Fishbase is a good example. They have people whose full-time job is to maintain the database, and they're doing a terrible job. It seems that if you split one species into two, they do a terrible job of sorting out the information that was previously all lumped in one species.
Just look at the info for Belodontichthys....many of the entries under B. dinema actually pertain to B. truncatus. Even the pictures are all mixed up.
We don't have full-time staff to maintain the website, so what can we do?

Post by **Dinyar** » 05 May 2003, 18:57

Jools,

I appreciate that a lot of these things are easier said than done. I was basically just daydreaming about what would be nice to have. PC already stands head and shoulders above its competition. Perhaps one of the benefits of "daydreaming" is that it may help to develop a vision as to where PC could and should go in future.

The other thing about this forum I think is unleashing the real power of the Internet and getting other people involved in contributing to Planet Catfish, making it everyone's site, even if you are the captain of the ship. Sure, a lot of us have a few good decades ahead of us

, but equally to the point, it's not just one or two people.

Turning the C'log into an online FileMaker or similar serachable database may not be that hard to do. Perhaps you and Rusty should retreat to the skunkworks (your new outhouse?

for a week or two. Maybe Rusty can talk Apple into donating a copy of the server edition of Filemaker to PC (I notice there's at least one Apple employee on the FB roster of contriutors)!

As for comparisons with FB, first, we're dealing with > 3,000 potential spp, in Siluriformes (and perhaps 1/3 of those are of no aquaristic interest), whereas FB is dealing with all fish (~ 30,000 spp.). We don't aspire to cover as many items of info about each sp. as FB. FB doesn't have huge resources either. And finally, we're at least as smart as and probably much more resourceful than they are!

Dinyar

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 05 May 2003, 19:30

Dinyar,

Believe me, I do my fair share of day dreaming too. Primarily what I could do with the site if I didn't have to spend most of my time elsewhere. Anyway, I remember a time before we even had the offline database and then it seemed a very long way to get to where we are today.

The current database is fine as we stand today, I think I will eventually move to an online database, but it has to become cheaper first. You know what happended in the first month of running the forum. I just love our current architecture of offline database producing flat HTML, it gives us a very high search engine visibility, security and reliablity. I think it can be pushed to give us a lot more too.

Unleashing is the right word, but right now with the resources to hand, I need to keep a tight hold on the reigns. The beast that is PlanetCatfish is pulling hard at what time I can give it.

All said, dumping the database to a flat file and migrating it to something like filemaker (or a mySQL dbase) is not going to be too hard. It's how we then mine all that information that will takes ages and could lead us into some hot water in terms of server resourcing.

Jools

Post by **Shane** » 06 May 2003, 00:28

Just to back up HH on the synonym issue. This would be a REAL bear to input even worse to maintain. In cases such as Dinyar's example I agree it would be useful, but let's admit that just learning a scientific name is about enough for many aquarists and I do not think many people search the database (or would search) based on an old synonym. Trying to track down synonyms is a full time job (as HH will tell you) and I am not sure how useful it would be unless updated almost daily. Also, for many fish it would not help. The average aquarist with an Axelrod Atlas will put in Mystus micracanthus (Bleeker, 1864) to find info on the two spot or clown Mystus. Junior synonyms are Bagrus macracanthus Bleeker, 1846; Hypselobagrus macracanthus Bleeker, 1862; Macrones macracanthus Gunther, 1864; and Mystus micracanthus Fowler, 1934. This is an easy case as the fish has remained the same sp. but changed genera. In any case, since Mystus bimaculatus Volz, 1904 was taken out of synonymy (Roberts, 1989) the searching aquarist still would not find their fish. For especially the old catfish families (like Bagridae) the lists of synonyms themselves are massive. From the science standpoint I like the suggestion alot, but from the practical side it would be a ton of work and probably never completed. I have even noticed that some scientific books, like Kottelat's new Fishes of Laos, are leaving synonym info out.
-Shane

Post by **Dinyar** » 06 May 2003, 02:48

I appreciate the difficulties in preparing complete and correct synonymies that HH and Shane refer to. And I agree that not many aquarists are really interested in the details of synonymy, and those that are can just as easily consult FB.

Perhaps my thinking is simplistic, but what I had in mind was a rough and practical list of common synonyms that would help resolve practical queries by non-scientists. We do not have to present every known synonym, no matter how obscure.

So I don't see the choice as all or nothing. Baensch, for example, lists common synonyms. The list is not exhaustive, there are mistakes, but it's still useful.

Much of the work has already been done on FB and by other sources. Standing on their shoulders is not plagiarism.

Dinyar

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 06 May 2003, 09:05

All true, but we still have to wait I beleive to have all the species data in before we then look at putting in all the species that they were. I do take some solace from teh thought that a whole bunch of "species" are not identified to species level and thus would not need synonym research.

BTW Dinyar, if you got FB to link to PC then you could search for synonyms on FB and then find the info on PC thus negating the need for synonyms on PC but aligning us with their data control issues.

Jools