GAB Research Program: Project 3.1 – Museum specimens: data collation

Progress Code: completed ; Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned ; Statement: Data request to Museum database managers for extracts; QC of spellings and checking for taxonomic synonyms, QC of sampling position information ; Credit Great Australian Bight Research Program (GABRP) ; Credit GABRP: BP, CSIRO, SARDI, the University of Adelaide and Flinders University ; Credit GAB Research Project - Theme 3 - Seafloor (benthic) Biodiversity ; Credit Shirley Sorokin (SARDI) ; Credit Franzis Althaus (CSIRO) ; Credit Museum Database Managers (AMS, NMV, SAMA, WAM, NTMAG, TMAG) ; Credit Karen Gowlett-Holmes (CSIRO) ; Credit Jason Tanner (SARDI) ; This record describes a derived data set of museum records collated and quality assured in 2015 by Shirley Sorokin (SARDI), Franzis Althaus (CSIRO), Karen Gowlett-Holmes (CSIRO) and Jason Tanner (SARDI) under the GAB Research Program. The GABRP aims to describe the key elements of the GAB marine ecosystem. This understanding of the structure and function of the ecosystem will be used to inform future integrated and sustainable ocean management and assessment/mitigation of potential future impacts. The collation and examination of museum data contributed to our endeavor of documenting existing knowledge of species distributions in the GAB region. Museum database managers were asked to provide an inventory of all specimens listed in their respective data bases that were collected in Australian waters between Perth and Sydney at >=200 m depth. The data were collated and CAAB identifiers were added taking into account differences in spelling, synonyms (outdated names) etc. Where uncertainty in an identification existed the next higher level in the taxonomic hierarchy was used for assigning CAAB.