Welcome to the Fishes of Texas Project Documentation
posted Mar 27, 2013, 3:09 PM by Adam Cohen [ updated Mar 28, 2013, 1:15 PM ]
We've been very busy and have made dramatic improvements in data content and website design resulting in great improvement in overall user experience. On November 14, 2013 our database and website (www.fishesoftexas.org) were updated to reflect those improvements and became version 1.10 of both the Fishes of Texas Project (FoTX) database and website. Users who downloaded data from version 1.00 beta are encouraged to query this new version for updated and new data not formerly available. Read the list of changes below carefully since many are substantial and could affect some users.The data quality is substantially improved in this version, as is site usability and documentation. Both the website and data will continue to evolve, and as we now start to more rigorously track versions of both, we also hope to expand in new directions to better serve our users and broaden the user community.
We've been working with our data and examining the specimens and have now updated our database to reflect those new discoveries as well as some other issues. Our track 2 data are now available. We are also now beginning to develop non-specimen based data and those are available as well.
All data are now visible to all users. But registration and login allows users to download data and participate by commenting on our data and providing images.
We've made numerous changes to the website that will improve the user experience and the utility of the data provided. Among the noteworthy improvements: expanded our documentation; consolidated our site to 2 servers (from 4); added helpful tooltips; and greatly improved the maps and specimens pages' presentation of data.
We've added thousands of new images.
We've been developing new keys including some based on character matrices that are extensively illustrated and function in innovative ways unlike traditional dichotomous keys.
Our species accounts are greatly improved with text now provided by Dr. Timothy Bonner and colleagues at Texas State University and new dynamic distribution maps.
We now provide our Species Distribution Models for many of the state's species and some of our findings based on the same data that we now make available to the public.
Users are encouraged to be active participants in improving our data and can now also assist us in georeferencing and by providing data to our growing photo-vouchered database.
We process our data in “batches†that we call “Tracksâ€. Each Track goes through extensive standardization, normalization and quality checking before addition to the online database. The only data available in the beta version were those in Track 1 (81,243 records). In this version the quality of Track 1 data is improved in many ways, and Track 2 (43,173 records) is made available for the first time (as a separate download, but soon to be added to the main database).
Track 1 data edits new to this version:
(for details see our documentation: Addition of Literature and Other Non-vouchered Data Sources)
Default user privileges have changed
Both non-registered and registered users are no longer restricted with regard to what data they can see and can now view all data approved for public distribution by our data donors. Registration and login are still required for downloads and to contribute comments or images, but registration is now immediate (users used to have wait on us to manually process their applications for registration).
Increased offerings from our digital library
We have added lots more images including:
Improved identification keys
Improved species accounts
Our previous species accounts had little information content, but are now nearly fully complete for many freshwater species. We are now collaborating with Dr. Timothy Bonner at Texas State University who has provided those accounts.
Our first generation (Class 1) species distribution models (n = 96) are now all available for download and we've added a section to our documentation ("Models") that comprehensively explains their creation and how to interpret them. Links to our use of these can also be found there.
We are collaborating with experts around the state to explore application of species distribution models to bioassessment of fish communities. See a summary of a working manuscript HERE.
Beyond our new iNaturalist site where users can submit their own occurrence data with photos, we now provide an easy way for users to assist us with georeferencing. We especially encourage users who may have contributed specimen records included in our database to take a look at how we've georeferenced them.