Monday 22 August 2005

B1
1000-1230 hours

019
The value of web-based plankton atlasses: experiences with halocyprid ostracods
Angel, Martin V¹, Blachowiak-Samolyk, K², Chavtur, V³
1 National Oceangraphic Centre, Southampton, UK
2 Institute Of Oceanology, Polish Academy Of Sciences, Sopot, Poland
3 Institute Of Marine Biology, Vladivostok, Russia
Author email: mva@noc.soton.ac.uk
Two web-based atlases for halocyprid planktonic ostracods have recently been published on the web, one of the Southern Ocean, the other for the Atlantic; based on compilations of published geopositioned records and supplemented with unpublished records. Planktonic ostracods, despite their ubiquity in oceanic water columns, are neglected partly because of their small sizes, but partly the taxonomic literature is inaccessible. The sites have been designed to provide both taxonomic and zoogeographical resources for all oceanographers and biogeographers with access to the web. Features they include are:- 1. Up-to-date global species listing; 2. A regional species list; 3. An illustrated guide to the morphology of the species; 4. A comprehensive bibliography of the group. The regional listing links to pages with an outline diagram of each species and offering three further options:- a. distributional maps, b. standardised diagrams; c. notes on the systematics of the species together with size data. The Atlantic website also gives bathymetric profiles, which are available for about half the species. The distributional maps based positive observations are prone to errors of identification, and systematic confusion. Disjunct distributional ranges often indicate taxonomic confusion, and have already resulted in the description of new species.

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