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Shane it is not collectore I think should not have any input just ones with a vested interest as I said

Shane wrote:

bob wrote:As Shane said we need to have control of the system not let collectors with vested interests have any input.

I would actually be far more comfortable with collectors having input as they at least would know where they captured the fish and could provide habitat data and a series of photos to document different ages and coloration/patterns among the population.

Bob,

Do you mean collectors in the pokemon sense or collectors in the field? You were ambiguous.

The only input in to the current system comes from a German aquarium magazine that publishes a single photo of a single specimen based on fishes with little to no provenience data shipped to Germany for the aquarium hobby.

That's not really true. If it were, for example, there'd be no "in the wild" pics in DATZ. Might be true for some of them sure, but I am not sure I'd go as far even saying many.

I just wanted to point out that I, having spent a lot of time with collectors and exporters in South America, disagree with this statement. Yes, as Jools pointed out, there are rare cases where collectors, hobbyists and/or exporters hide the point of collection for their own ego or business interests, but this is almost unheard of in the trade. In fact most collectors are very willing to share this type of information and are, quite frankly often flattered that anyone would even ask.

I would heartily agree with this however it's not quite the whole story. I do agree it's often the case though and could cite which is not imported becuase it is just in a tricky place to get to and not for any other reason.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think your experience includes any collectors or exporters of north flowing Brazilian Amazon tributaries? It is also pre-recent IBAMA restrictions (however, I note you and I sat in a hotel room in Colombia discussing such things with a local exporter when at least the L046 restriction was in place). It is also not taking account of your excellent local Spanish, large size and ability to charm new acquaintances in a way most German importers would singularly fail to do. In short, you're approachable, not in the trade, don't look like a government official and so less of big deal to talk to.

In my experience, the locality of a fish is guarded until more than one collector knows it, then it is not. The problem (and the point I am rambling towards) is that at the point an l-number is created, it may well be guarded, (and info in DATZ wrong) but time passes and the real data comes out.

Jools

macvsog23 wrote:

MatsP wrote:

macvsog23 wrote:My self I would have preferred may be a system were the genus is followed by a location number then a collection number IE hypan L1 C1 for a fish from say one lactation the next fish from that location would be hypan L1 C2 and so on but that would be a night mare to implement so it can never happen.

By collection number, you mean "C1" is collected on the 25th of May 2001, "C2" collected on 7th July 2002, etc? Or just "C1" is "off-white squiggly stripes", "C2" is "pure white squiggly stripes". If it is the latter, then that's exactly what the L-number system already does, just not encoded so that you can separate out the location directly from the number.

L would be the location so a river or area has a Location number
Ie L1 L2 L3 ECT

C is a collection number so the first fish is C1 next C 2

As Shane said we need to have control of the system not let collectors with vested interests have any input.

Regards Bob

So, does collection C1 mean a "species" - say L260, ad C2 another "species", say Hypancistrus zebra, or is C1 the first time someone collected what we know as L260, and C2 the second time L260 was collected?

I have enough "system" training to, if you are after the first variant, to completely agree with Jools. You should have ONE "code" that leads to all other information, not two "codes" merged together.

And if you are after the second variant, then I don't quite understand what the purpose of differentiating two different captures or essentially the same species?

--
Mats

But I don't think wrong = broken, at least not on that example, or at least I'm not going on that assumption.

I agree that "broke" is a very broadly defined concept. As Sandor pointed out (and echoed what I said in my first post) "the question as to which is the "actual" L 187 is quite simple: it is the fish pictured in DATZ 10/1994. And NO other..." If all resources that do not use the original photo for the L Number that appeared in DATZ magazine are incorrect, how do we use this as a meaningful identification system? Maybe not "broke" then as much as fundamentally flawed as an internationally useful system.

I still respectfully disagree that a more useful system, similar to the Killi system or otherwise, is not an option. I also think hobbyist and others would quickly embrace a system that did not have the equivalent of catfish DRM like the L Number system has. I'll bet money that Jools could design an "open source" loricariid ID system that would incorporate photos and information (like the Cat-eLog already does) from hobbyists, collectors, scientists, etc all over the world that would replace the L Number system (outside the Pokeman crowd anyway) in less than a year.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think your experience includes any collectors or exporters of north flowing Brazilian Amazon tributaries?

I think this disagreement stems from Mats, you, and I all talking about different things. I took Mats' original statement to mean that it was a common practice among tropical fish collectors to hide their collecting areas from exporters and others. This is simply not true as often the exporters are family or close associates of the exporters. It is also common that exporters (at least in Bogota) visit collectors several times a year to explain (and show pictures) of what they want collected. They will also come to oversee the collection and holding of particularly valuable specimens (like Arowana and expensive loricariids) when they are in season, as Diego was doing when we ran into him in Leticia. I just do not agree that for 99% of aquarium fishes we lack good collection data because it is somehow hidden in a dark plot fueled by greed. We lack it usually because the method by which a fish goes from the river to an aquarium store is long and complex and almost always crosses several international and linguistic borders.

-Shane

I think the picture=l-number view is over simplified. I'd prefer the idea that picture="holotype lite" and that's what I go on here. And there's a whole book to be written on how you develop skills to ID fishes from pictures.

Shane wrote:I still respectfully disagree that a more useful system, similar to the Killi system or otherwise, is not an option. I also think hobbyist and others would quickly embrace a system that did not have the equivalent of catfish DRM like the L Number system has.

I didn't think of the l-number system being akin to catfish DRM probably because I have close access to it. But the LDA system is I guess - which really annoyed me I have to say. It's a very, very good point. You might be able to get them from teh DATZ website. However, if I made up a new system (see below) how would it be better on this level alone? Is it solved just by being freely available on the internet?

I'll bet money that Jools could design an "open source" loricariid ID system that would incorporate photos and information (like the Cat-eLog already does) from hobbyists, collectors, scientists, etc all over the world that would replace the L Number system (outside the Pokeman crowd anyway) in less than a year.

I'll take the money.

Much as though I would like to impress everyone with my technical whizz, I can't see it. But if I could, I'd see it standardising all coding systems, so byebye C, CW, LDA and anything else too. I need to think about this again. I did something similar for the Scottish legal system years ago. Where the offence "Assault" was modified by, for example, "Male on Female" and aggravated by "Racial" which then allowed you a fuller picture in regard to national sentencing guidelines but encased it in a few thousand coded values (versus an near infinite list of detailed offences). So, in our example here, a species could be modified by location or other attributes. It failed, when I thought about it, because it only works for WC fish and also it becomes very close to subspecies. It also generates 22 digit codes. How do we fancy L1234567890123456789012? However, I wasn't thinking about L-numbers, I was thinking about the linnean structure. I ended up with a view that the way to fix it was to introduce a tagging system (like how you tag pals on facebook) but that allowed you to tag attributes of whatever you are looking at fishwise. Tags are fed into grinder and you get something like a youtube video ref (tinyurl).

The tags thing is on the backburner, but we should talk about it more(maybe not here). I also need to spend a bit more time with the issues of wider fishkeepers and not just catfishes to see if it fits that breadth of need.

I think this disagreement stems from Mats, you, and I all talking about different things. I took Mats' original statement to mean that it was a common practice among tropical fish collectors to hide their collecting areas from exporters and others. This is simply not true as often the exporters are family or close associates of the exporters. It is also common that exporters (at least in Bogota) visit collectors several times a year to explain (and show pictures) of what they want collected. They will also come to oversee the collection and holding of particularly valuable specimens (like Arowana and expensive loricariids) when they are in season, as Diego was doing when we ran into him in Leticia. I just do not agree that for 99% of aquarium fishes we lack good collection data because it is somehow hidden in a dark plot fueled by greed. We lack it usually because the method by which a fish goes from the river to an aquarium store is long and complex and almost always crosses several international and linguistic borders.

Yeah, I agree Mats was a bit off, but for the group of Xingu fishes that spawned the topic that spawned this topic, there is secrecy and misinformation at work too. I mean, as Mats did point out, the type locality of H. zebra is wrong as it contains such misinformation, that's serious. This points to the fact that, in some cases, commercial pressures affected the data. Or did when it went into DATZ. It's not widespread in l-numbers as the majority of them are from aquarists with nets but it's there and I think it'll be on the rise. But, for me, that's the case with everything and isn't a flaw of the particular system.

Jools