AFSCUS Software Description

Recommendation: Fishbase V1.2 is a very useful and easy to use tool that allows fisheries scientists, students, and individuals interested in the natural history of fishes to explore and aggregate families and genera of fish throughout the world. This tool provides a comprehensive literature base that is current through 1993 and provides a great starting point for individuals needing preliminary data and information on particular taxa. This tool would be very useful as a teaching instrument in fisheries science and ichthyology courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Areas of zoogeography, growth, development, population dynamics, and importance to fisheries are available if the information exists. This program is highly recommended for inclusion into the AFSCUS library and should be displayed and demonstrated for AFS membership at chapter, regional, and national meetings.

Category	Score	Comment
Operating Systems Environment	3	Requires large disk and fast computer
User Interface	1	Well thought out!
User Manual	1	Easy to use and cross-referenced
Help Facility	1	Easy to use and accurate
Examples	1	Fantastic!
Learning Curve	3	Requires a basic understanding of how databases operate and some idea of the nomenclature of fishes.
Ease of Usage	2	Multiple menus and navigation takes a little while to learn to use.
Usefulness to Fisheries Science	1	First database tool to bring together this information on world fishes.

1 = Excellent, 2 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 4 = Poor, 5 = Not Applicable

Review Environment: Compaq Deskpro XL 5120, 44mb RAM, 4.4gb disk capacity, CD-ROM (Multispin 4x), Windows 3.11 for workgroups and NT version 3.51. Note: This application must have Windows and will not run efficiently on anything smaller than an 80486 based PC. It is strongly recommended that users have available a Pentium processor with as much RAM and disk space as they can acquire.

General Comments: Fishbase V1.2 will only run in the PC environment where either a large disk or a local area network (LAN) is available. You may also run Fishbase V1.2 from the CD-ROM. In this review the software was installed first on the disk and then secondly executed from a 4x CD-ROM drive. It is highly recommended that you operate this application from a disk. The CD-ROM was considerably slower, and with large queries it can be very slow. Fishbase V1.2 requires 180mb of hard drive capacity. The installation recommends a minimum of 16mb RAM. I ran it with 44mb RAM and found performance to be excellent when the software is installed on the hard drive.

Fishbase has a series of relational data base tables that allows for information on individual fish species to be cross-referenced and cataloged. Areas include species zoogeography and nomenclature, population dynamics, reproduction, morphology and physiology, and genetics. The weakest areas are in physiology and genetics, but this may be expected since the literature in these two areas may be more difficult to collate and incorporate into the data base.

The strongest area of the database is the relationship between the data tables and the references provided. This will provide scientists and students alike the ability to evaluate summarized published data with a cross-reference. The relationships to the collaborators information also provides the user a name of a fisheries scientist who has had input into the development and summarization of data used in this product.

The ability to generate a check list for a specific geographic area is especially useful. The ichthyoplankton information on eggs, and larvae is somewhat weak and incomplete. Future versions of this software may want to provide cross-referenced larval descriptions and morphological development with each taxa.

Suggestions for Improvement: Keeping Fishbase up to date and current may be a difficult task. This review suggests that all individuals who subscribe to this software become a collaborator and participate in keeping this package up to date and current with recent, relevant literature. One possibility would be for the Fishbase development team to publish Fishbase on the Internet, with a nominal subscription fee.