PlanetCatfish.com

Hey @Jools,

Do you think it makes sense to to add an endemism feature along with the Distribution field or separately in the CateLog profiles? This might give users a real idea of how confined certain species are in terms of distribution. I am referring to regions and not rivers. Using India as an example, there many species of catfish endemic to the Western Ghats and several others endemic to north-east India, both recognised as biodiversity hotspots. We could follow the globally recognised list of such hotspots and/or use the extensive knowledge of forum members to create a database of these regions.

If we want to take it up a notch, using India as an example again, the Western Ghats are split into three sections southern, central and northern - and each region harbours its own endemic catfish species. Such a drill down will help 'expose' narrow-range endemics, especially across vast areas like the above-mentioned regions and other biodiversity hotspots such as the ones in South America.

What do you think?

I think you make a good point - if I look at a map of India, I can see points on a distribution map, but that point could be one lake, or a 100 km square area - and in the altte case, the species might not be properly researched and can be found elsewhere.

It's a lot of work creating and maintaining the database, though. Who's going to be doing it?

Hey HH,

Are you referring to identifying hotspots and creating a database, or the tech part? If its the former, I was thinking we could develop a database based on available literature (Myers etc). A broadly framed list would likely contain lesser than 50 such regions. What do you think?

I am referring to creating and maintaining the database. Some fields (e.g., conservation status) are populated by data from existing databases. It would be quite a bit of work to create and maintain a database. There are also very many species with poorly-understood distributions that are likely to confound such a database.