Browsing by Subject "occurrence data"

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    General Fish Surveys on Selected Texas National Guard Properties: Camp Bowie, Camp Mabry, Camp Maxey, Camp Swift and Fort Wolters
    (2007-12) Hendrickson, Dean; Cohen, Adam
    The Texas Natural History Collection of the Texas Natural Science Center was contracted to conduct a fish survey on five Texas Military Forces facilities in Texas, including: Camp Mabry (Travis County), Camp Swift (Bastrop county), Camp Bowie (Brown county), Camp Maxey (Lamar County), and Fort Wolters (Parker County). This is the second fish survey completed for the properties. The first was completed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) in 1995 and included a total of 27 species, representing eight families collected from the five properties. During the course of this survey, 39 species were collected, representing 10 families. New records include Aplodinotus grunniens, Carpiodes carpio, Cyprinus carpio, Esox niger, Etheostoma parvipinne, Lepisosteus oculatus, Minytrema melanops, Notropis texanus, Percina macrolepida, Percina carbonaria, Pomoxis nigromaculatus, and Pylodictis olivaris. Species which we were not able to re collect include Astyanax mexicanus and Pimephales promelas. Three species were widely distributed and collected at every base: Micropterus salmoides, Lepomis macrochirus, and Gambusia affinis. The most species-rich family was Centrarchidae and within that, Lepomis was the most species-rich genus with eight species. Consistent amongst the five bases, diversity ranked highest in perennial streams, lowest in lentic habitats, and intermediate in intermittent streams.
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    Update on the Fishes of Texas Project
    (2017-03-04) Cohen, Adam; Hendrickson, Dean A.; Urban, Tomislav; Walling, David; Gentle, John; Garrett, Gary; Casarez, Melissa; Martin, F. Douglas
    The Fishes of Texas project (www.fishesoftexas.org), originating in 2006, remains the most reliable (quality controlled) and data rich site for acquiring occurrence data for Texas fishes, holding over 124,000 records from 42 institutions. Among many discoveries, the project is responsible for detecting at least 3 freshwater species not previously known from the state. We continue making improvements, but substantial updates so far have been onerous for our developers for various reasons. A recent major update reduces coding redundancies, points the website to a new massively restructured and more fully normalized PostgreSQL database (was MySQL), and places the code in a versioning environment. These changes have little immediate effect on user experience, but will greatly accelerate development. PostgreSQL allows for complex spatial queries which will allow users to quickly map occurrence data alongside many more political/environmental layers than currently possible. While our database/web designers have been implementing these changes and fixing bugs etc., we’ve been preparing resources for them to integrate into the website. Some highlights to expect: 1 new updates to the state Species of Greatest Concern list; 2 expert opinion-determined nativity spatial layers for all freshwater fishes displaying in our new mapping system; 3 dynamic statistical summaries; 4 new data types from the literature (>14,900 records), citizen science (>4,300), anglers (>37,000), and agency databases (>1,000,000); 5 new museum records, many derived from our gap sampling (~19,000, 4 museums); 6 more specimen examinations (>400) and photographs (1000); 7 document archive with “smart” text search tools (currently in beta testing using TPWD fisheries reports). So be patient and keep your eyes open for updates.