A Biotic Database of Indo-Pacific Marine Mollusks

Biotic Database of Indo-Pacific Marine Mollusks provides access to nomenclatural, distribution, and ecological information on Indo-Pacific Mollusks. Georeferenced specimen records from ANSP and AMS related to these names are available for search through the OBIS global digital atlas. Nomenclatural, distribution, and ecological information assembled from the literature is available for search on the web. This database attempts to document all names that have ever been applied to marine molluscs in the tropical Indo-West Pacific.

This database provides information on the estimated 30,000 named species of mollusks in the Indo-Pacific region, with summary data on their distribution and ecology. A future objective is to combine Indo-Pacific data with existing databases for Western Atlantic and Europe marine mollusk species and for higher taxa of mollusks to form the basis of a global database of Mollusca. This database will provide a uniform framework for linking specimen records from museum collections and data from fisheries to show spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence and abundance.

This database was compiled by teams at the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Australian Museum, the Muséum National d' Histoire Naturelle, and the California Academy of Sciences, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, and the Australian Biological Resources Study. This database is part of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System.

As of 2006 May 19 the Database contains 84,147 names of all ranks, 72,597 species-group names, and 28,357 species names in current use, and 179,368 specimen records.