FBIP:IZIKO-UCT:Historical Survey (1930-1980)

Around the 1930’s Stevenson and Day along with the University of Cape Town (UCT) started up the UCT ecological survey project which aimed to create a reference collection of the biodiversity along the southern African coastline and various other localities around the world (e.g. Beaufort shelf transect Alaska, Madagascar, etc.) (Griffiths et al. 2010). Initially the survey/project was conducted along the shoreline of southern Africa (estimated collection areas: 36). The survey/project was later expanded to surveying the estuaries of southern Africa (estimated collection areas: 17). The survey/project was completed by conducting deeper water trawls and dredges of the west, south and east coast of southern Africa. It is important to note that each collection area contains various collection sites, for example False Bay (collection area) contains an estimated 856 collection sites. The reference collection and registers were donated to the IZIKO South African museum in the 1960’s by UCT. Numerous amounts of literature have been published by using the data in the registers (Barnard 1951, Stock & Day 1959, Stock & Day 1962, Griffiths 1974, Blaber 1974 and Griffiths et al. 2010). Currently there are a number of taxanomic projects underway, that rely on the data contained within the registers. By making the data available in a sensible electronic format will greatly improve the time taken to complete current and future projects that rely on the registers for data. Along with the reference specimen collection it also contains a vast number of observational records, which could potentially provide a massive historical database of species occurrences dating back to more than forty years ago. Datasets such as these could potentially give us greater insights into the effects of global change on biodiversity (Chapman 2005, Chapman 2010).

自20世纪30年代起，史蒂文森与戴伊携手开普敦大学（UCT）启动了生态调查项目，旨在构建沿南部非洲海岸线及其它世界各地（例如，贝福特海域横断面阿拉斯加、马达加斯加等）的生物多样性参考数据库（Griffiths et al. 2010）。最初，该调查/项目沿南部非洲海岸线进行（估计收集区域：36个）。随后，调查/项目扩展至对南部非洲河口进行考察（估计收集区域：17个）。通过对南部非洲西、南、东海岸的深层水拖网和疏浚作业，完成了调查/项目的最终实施。值得注意的是，每个收集区域均包含多个收集点，例如，假湾（收集区域）内便含有约856个收集点。20世纪60年代，开普敦大学（UCT）将参考收集品和登记册捐赠至南非的IZIKO博物馆。基于登记册中的数据，已发表大量文献（Barnard 1951，Stock & Day 1959，Stock & Day 1962，Griffiths 1974，Blaber 1974和Griffiths et al. 2010）。目前，诸多分类学项目正在进行中，这些项目依赖登记册中的数据。将数据以合理的电子格式提供，将极大地缩短依赖登记册数据进行当前及未来项目的时间。除参考标本收集品外，该数据集还包含大量观测记录，这些记录可能构成一个关于物种出现的历史数据库，其时间可追溯至四十年前。此类数据集有望为我们提供更深入的理解，关于全球变化对生物多样性的影响（Chapman 2005，Chapman 2010）。