Corresponding authors: Alessandro Minelli (
Academic editor: Christos Arvanitidis
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; i.e. alternative names still in use, or at lead found in recent literature) 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-year project, delivering its first release in 2004. After thirteen years of steady progress, in order to improve the dissemination of Fauna Europaea results and to increase the general awareness and acknowledgement of Fauna Europaea contributors, novel e-Publishing tools have been used to prepare data papers of all 58 major taxonomic groups (
In order to improve the dissemination and citation of Fauna Europaea and to increase the acknowledge of the Fauna Europaea contributors, a special
In the
Fauna Europaea is a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living, currently known European land and fresh-water animal species assembled by a large network of experts. An extended description of the Fauna Europaea project can be found in
The
The
The
Molecular phylogenetic studies have heavily impacted on the internal classification of the
A revised delineation of genera and families is also suggested by a first molecular taxonomic study on
This BDJ data paper includes the taxonomic indexing efforts in 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 for 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 Table
A more detailed overview of the Fauna Europaea classification and expertise network for
Data management tasks are taken care of by the Fauna Europaea project bureau. During the project phase (until 2004) a network of principal partners took care of diverse management tasks:
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).
Standards. Group coordinators and taxonomic specialists have to deliver the (sub)species names according to strict standards. The names provided by Fauna Europaea are scientific names. The taxonomic scope includes issues like, (1) the definition of criteria used to identify the accepted species-group taxa, (2) the hierarchy (classification scheme) for the accommodation of the all accepted species, (3) relevant synonyms, and (4) the correct nomenclature. The Fauna Europaea '
Data management. The data records could either be entered offline into a preformatted MS-Excel worksheet or directly into the Fauna Europaea transaction database using an online browser interface (see Fig.
Data set. The Fauna Europaea basic data set consists of: accepted (sub)species names (including authorship), synonym names (including authorship), a taxonomic hierarchy/classification, misapplied names (including misspellings and alternative taxonomic views), homonym annotations, expert details, European distribution (at country level), Global distribution (only for European species), taxonomic reference (optional), occurrence reference (optional).
Fauna Europaea was funded by the European Commission under various framework programs (see Acknowledgement).
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 to 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 on the 27th of September 2004, the most recent release (version 2.6.2) was launched on the 29th August 2013. An overview of Fauna Europaea releases can be found here:
Fauna Europaea data are unique in the 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.
In conclusion, in general we expect to get taxonomic data for 99.3% of the known European fauna. The faunistic coverage is not quite as good, but is nevertheless 90–95% of the total fauna. For the
Checks on technical and logical correctness of the data have been implemented in the data entry tools, including around 50 "
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 animals of terrestrial and freshwater environments. Species in brackish waters, occupying the marine/freshwater or marine/terrestrial transition zones, are generally excluded.
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
All species described to date are included in the current version of the data base. We may expect a future increase of species numbers for
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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 data are licensed under
Fauna Europaea -
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Fauna Europaea -
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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 this resource, including a DOI of this data-paper ( |
Fauna Europaea -
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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 ( |
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 this resource, including a DOI of this data-paper ( |
Fauna Europaea was funded by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme and contributed to the Support for Research Infrastructures work programme with Thematic Priority Biodiversity (EVR1-1999-20001) for a period of four years (1 March 2000 - 1 March 2004), including a short 'NAS extension', allowing EU candidate accession countries to participate. Follow-up support was given by the EC-FP5
Fauna Europaea geographic coverage ('minimal Europe').
FaEu
The common snail leech
The European terrestrial leech
Fauna Europaea on-line (browser interfaces) and off-line (spreadsheets) data entry tools.
Responsible specialists per family in
FAMILY | NUMBER OF SPECIES IN FAEU (in brackets, estimated actual number of existing species) | SPECIALIST(S) |
|
1 (1) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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9 (9) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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1 (1) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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32 (~42) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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18 (~20) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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2 (2) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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5 (5) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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27 (~29) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
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3 (3) | Alessandro Minelli, Boris Sket |
Responsible associated specialists in
GROUP or AREA | SPECIALIST(S) |
|
Serge Utevsky |
Eastern European countries | Serge Utevsky |