Corresponding authors: Rafael Araujo (
Academic editor: Lyubomir Penev
European freshwater bivalves belong to the Orders
The European Commission published the
With regard to biodiversity in Europe, both science and policies depend on a knowledge of its components. The assessment of biodiversity, monitoring changes, sustainable exploitation of biodiversity, and much legislative work depend upon a validated overview of taxonomic biodiversity. Towards this end Fauna Europaea plays a major role, providing a web-based information infrastructure with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all living European land and freshwater animals, their geographical distribution at country level and some additional useful information. In this sense, the Fauna Europaea database provides a unique reference for many user-groups such as scientists, governments, industries, conservation communities and educational programs.
Fauna Europaea started in 2000 as an EC-FP5 four-years project, delivering its first release in 2004 (
Within the
The Fauna Europaea is a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living, currently known multicellular European land and fresh-water animal species assembled by a large network of experts, using advanced electronic tools for data collations and validation routines. An extended description of the Fauna Europaea project can be found in
The
Bivalves (8,000 species) are the second richest mollusc class after the
Pea clams (
Often also named by its synomy
In Europe live two genera and two species,
Recentrly Bilandzija (
The assemblage fauna of European
Freshwater mussels, also known as naiads, can grow to lengths of 25 cm and live more than a century. They are one of the most imperilled animal groups on the planet, yet they play an extremely important role in the ecology of freshwater ecosystems as a main component of the freshwater biomass (
In addition, one of the most amazing traits about freshwater mussels is their specialized reproductive strategy: the eggs are fertilized in the mussel gills (marsupium), where also occurs the segmentation until the glochidium, which has a temporary but obligatory parasitic stage in which the larvae (glochidia) attach to the external surface of a suitable host prior to metamorphosis to the free-living juvenile stage. The males release to the water the sperm, which will be siphoned for the females for fertilization (
The form of the
This Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) data paper includes the taxonomic indexing efforts in the Fauna Europaea on European
The taxonomic framework of Fauna Europaea includes
Every taxonomic group is covered by at least one Group Coordinator responsible for the supervision and integrated input of taxonomic and distributional data of a particular group. The Fauna Europaea checklist would not have reached its current level of completion without the input from several groups of specialists. The formal responsibility of collating and delivering the data of relevant families rested with a number of Taxonomic Specialists (see Table
Data management tasks are carried out by the
The area study covers the European mainland (Western Palearctic), including the Macaronesian islands, excluding the Caucasus, Turkey, Arabian Peninsula and Northern Africa (see: Geographic coverage).
For preparing the
See spatial coverage and geographic coverage descriptions.
Fauna Europaea data have been assembled by principal taxonomic experts, based on their individual expertise, including literature sources, collection research, and field observations. In total no less than 476 experts contributed taxonomic and/or faunistic information for Fauna Europaea. The vast majority of the experts are from Europe (including EU non-member states). As a unique feature, Fauna Europaea funds were set aside for rewarding/compensating for the work of taxonomic specialists and group coordinators.
To facilitate data transfer and data import, sophisticated on-line (web interfaces) and off-line (spreadsheets) data-entry routines were built, integrated within an underlying central Fauna Europaea transaction database (see Fig.
A first release of the Fauna Europaea index via the web-portal has been presented at 27th of September 2004, the most recent release (version 2.6.2) was launched at 29 August 2013. An overview of Fauna Europaea releases can be found here:
Fauna Europaea data are unique in a sense that they are fully expert based. Selecting leading experts for all groups assured the systematic reliability and consistency of the Fauna Europaea data.
Furthermore, all Fauna Europaea data sets are intensively reviewed at regional and thematic validation meetings, at review sessions on taxonomic symposia (for some groups), by Fauna Europaea Focal Points (during the FaEu-NAS and PESI projects) and by various end-users sending annotations using the web form at the web-portal. Additional validation on gaps and correct spelling was effected at the validation office in Paris.
Checks on technical and logical correctness of the data have been implemented in the data entry tools, including around 50 "
Estimated gaps for
To optimise the use and implementation of a uniform and correct nomenclature, also following the global efforts on establishing a so-called 'Global Names Architecture' (
By evaluating team structure and life cycle procedures (data-entry, validation, updating, etc.), clear definitions of roles of users and user-groups, according to the taxonomic framework were established, including ownership and read and writes privileges, and their changes during the project life-cycle. In addition, guidelines on common data exchange formats and codes have been issued (see also the '
Species and subspecies distributions in Fauna Europaea are registered at least a country level, i.e. for political countries. For this purpose the FaEu geographical system basically follows the TDWG standards. The covered area includes the European mainland (Western Palearctic), plus the Macaronesian islands (excl. Cape Verde Islands), Cyprus, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya. Western Kazakhstan and the Caucasus are excluded (see Fig.
The focus is on species (or subspecies) of European multicellular animals of terrestrial and freshwater environments. Species in brackish waters, occupying the marine/freshwater or marine/terrestrial transition zones, are generally excluded. Nevertheless, we have considered some bivalves which can survive in brackish waters, as Mytilopsis and Dreissena.
Mediterranean (N 35°) and Arctic Islands (N 82°) Latitude; Atlantic Ocean (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) (W 30°) and Ural (E 60°) Longitude.
The Fauna Europaea database contains the scientific names of all living European land and freshwater animal species, including numerous infra-groups and synonyms. More details about the conceptual background of Fauna Europaea and standards followed are described above and in the project description paper(s).
This data paper covers the
Although the classification used in FaunaEuropaea include the order
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Currently living animals in stable populations, largely excluding (1) rare/irregular immigrants, intruder or invader species, (2) accidental or deliberate releases of exotic (pet) species, (3) domesticated animals, (4) foreign species imported and released for bio-control or (5) foreign species largely confined to hothouses.
Open Data Commons Attribution License
Fauna Europaea -
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Fauna Europaea -
CSV
UTF-8
Column label | Column description |
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datasetName | The name identifying the data set from which the record was derived ( |
version | Release version of data set. |
versionIssued | Issue data of data set version. |
rights | Information about rights held in and over the resource ( |
rightsHolder | A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource ( |
accessRights | Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status ( |
taxonID | An identifier for the set of taxon information ( |
parentNameUsageID | An identifier for the name usage of the direct parent taxon (in a classification) of the most specific element of the scientificName ( |
scientificName | The full scientific name, with authorship and date information if known ( |
acceptedNameUsage | The full name, with authorship and date information if known, of the currently valid (zoological) taxon ( |
originalNameUsage | The original combination (genus and species group names), as firstly established under the rules of the associated nomenclaturalCode ( |
family | The full scientific name of the family in which the taxon is classified ( |
familyNameId | An identifier for the family name. |
genus | The full scientific name of the genus in which the taxon is classified ( |
subgenus | The full scientific name of the subgenus in which the taxon is classified. Values include the genus to avoid homonym confusion ( |
specificEpithet | The name of the first or species epithet of the scientificName ( |
infraspecificEpithet | The name of the lowest or terminal infraspecific epithet of the scientificName, excluding any rank designation ( |
taxonRank | The taxonomic rank of the most specific name in the scientificName ( |
scientificNameAuthorship | The authorship information for the scientificName formatted according to the conventions of the applicable nomenclaturalCode ( |
authorName | Author name information |
namePublishedInYear | The four-digit year in which the scientificName was published ( |
Brackets | Annotation if authorship should be put between parentheses. |
nomenclaturalCode | The nomenclatural code under which the scientificName is constructed ( |
taxonomicStatus | The status of the use of the scientificName as a label for a taxon ( |
resourceDescription | An account of the resource, including a data-paper DOI ( |
Fauna Europaea -
CSV
UTF-8
Column label | Column description |
---|---|
datasetName | The name identifying the data set from which the record was derived ( |
version | Release version of data set. |
versionIssued | Issue data of data set version. |
rights | Information about rights held in and over the resource ( |
rightsHolder | A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource ( |
accessRights | Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status ( |
taxonName | The full scientific name of the higher-level taxon |
scientificNameAuthorship | The authorship information for the scientificName formatted according to the conventions of the applicable nomenclaturalCode ( |
taxonRank | The taxonomic rank of the most specific name in the scientificName ( |
taxonID | An identifier for the set of taxon information ( |
parentNameUsageID | An identifier for the name usage of the direct parent taxon (in a classification) of the most specific element of the scientificName ( |
resourceDescription | An account of the resource, including a data-paper DOI ( |
The mollusks bivalvia taxonomy in Fauna Europaea proceeds from the
The authors thank María de los Ángeles Ramos, head of the Fauna Ibérica Project, for entrusting the work to update the taxonomy of the Spanish freshwater bivalves and for recommending the first author to the Fauna Europaea. In addition, the authors would like to express their gratitude towards the
aEu
Living specimens of
Colony of zebra mussel,
The endangered species
Fauna Europaea on-line (browser interfaces) and off-line (spreadsheets) data entry tools.
Fauna Europaea geographic coverage ('minimal Europe').
Responsible specialists per family in
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Rafael Araujo | 2 | 2 | 2 |
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Rafael Araujo | 5 | 7 | 7–10 |
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Rafael Araujo | 2 | 2 | 2 |
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Rafael Araujo | 30 | 34 | 35–40 |
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Rafael Araujo | 16 | 19 | 19–25 |