Arctic benthic invertebrate collection of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science

This dataset describes the Arctic component of the marine invertebrate collection of the Zoological Institute RAN (in Russian; in English: ZIN RAS Russian Academy of Sciences), one of the largest in the world. Overall, this collection contains over 100.000 samples of 26.000 specimens of marine invertebrates; its current version (version 31st August 2007) consists of 2519 stations, from 61 expeditions done with 48 vessels in 4 oceans, 16 seas (for the Arctic:Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Central Arctic Basin, Chukchi Sea, East Siberian Sea, Greenland Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, Norwegian Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, White Sea, Arctic Russian Seas), 24 bays, and 59 islands by 13 institutes. One should note that the actual collection is bigger than the samples (Probes) analyzed and what eventually enters the database as presented here. Data included in this dataset were collected in the field from 1861 to 2004. The creation of the collection database on invertebrates, which started in 1987, is still prospective, ongoing and tries to study biocoenotic relationships and marine fauna ecosystems in more detail. In the course of the organization of the faunistic, ecological and collection data, the informational retrieval systems OCEAN (Arctic species list), ZOOCOD (Software system by ZIN for the creation of a taxonomy; following system of Malakhov to the class level) and ECOANT (same as OCEAN but for Antarctica) were designed at ZISP (English name for Zoological Institute St. Petersburg; ZIN in Russian). Geo-referencing for old cruises was done manually using Russian Nautical charts of unknown spatial accuracy (2-4 decimals, or better, are given). Locations were taken according to ship log and navigation plan (marshroute). From the 1970s onwards modern navigation was used on large ships, e.g. Furuno Navigation and GPS systems. A sextant was used before, and other navigation systems of that time. Some sta tions were marked manually, e.g. by coastal features; GPS was used after 1980. No one consistent spatial accuracy is possible to provide for historical records; for details the database authors need to be contacted. This dataset exist in a dBase format, and was originally designed in FoxPro and later with MySQL. The taxonomy followed the Russian school, and was displayed with WORMS (and ITIS for comparison) towards a consistent species list and agreed taxonomies. The current database version includes over 133 species, consisting of only the ones that are completely identified, e.g. at least identified to genus level; few are additionally identified further. In this data set, the brittle stars are very well covered, so are cumacea, bivalves, chitons, starfishes, and holothurians. Amphiphods are covered partly. The rest of the benthos is not covered, but planned for a work up over the future. More data are constantly added in subsequent versions of the database. This database consists as well of an external and very valuable bibliography related to the database subject, species and Russian Arctic (benthic) research with 761 records in a dbf format. This component deals with specific Russian literature on benthos in Russian with translated titles in English and the transliteration of the source and authors from cyrillic into latin letters. This information will be linked later with OCEAN and ZOOCOD systems, e.g. for first author and latin names. As of December 4, 2006 the official name is - Arctic benthic invertebrate collection of the Zoological Institute of RAS The standard version is ABIC-ZIN (Arctic Benthos Invertebrate Collection) 31.08.2007. Igor Smirnov lead the data base development, Boris Sirenko did the paper version of the publication. For biological and administrative purposes, the term Arctic includes the northern hemisphere, 0 degree northwards (but without Russian Far East (Sea of Okhotsk and Japan Sea)).