Nicolas Bailly

• Doctorat, Biodiversity Informatics, MNHN, Paris
• Curatorial Assistant at University of British Columbia

Information systems like Xper3 and Fulgoromorpha Lists On the Web (FLOW) play a crucial role in managing and using biological data. These platforms store extensive collections of normalized data and structured taxonomic descriptions. By using controlled terminologies, they standardize the vocabulary, significantly enhancing the processes of identif...

FishBase (www.fishbase.org) is a global, open access information system about fishes that contains published scientific data on topics such as physiology and behaviour, life-history characteristics, and species distributions. Since its creation in the late 1980s, FishBase has evolved into a highly dynamic and versatile tool for scientists and the p...

Key traits of functional biodiversity are examined for 31,134 species of fishes. These traits are maximum body weight, productivity, and trophic level. A new, simple framework is presented that shows the combined usage of these traits, in ordinal categories, for close to 90% of extant species of fishes. Most species are clustered tightly along an e...

A list of diadromous and marine fishes occurring in the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago and its EEZ has been compiled from various available data sources: collections, local and international databases, and literature. This belated work was needed as the only existing checklist dates back to the 19th century and FishBase, as of early 2022, pr...

Although the biodiversity informatics community has recognized and understood the complexity of modeling information about scientific names and associated taxonomic concepts for more than three decades, many of the original questions and problems remain unresolved today. Because most biodiversity data is anchored to scientific names, and these name...

Using all data sources available, we collected 2,189 nominal scientific names that have been applied to the fishes from Gabon. Data from the literature and online database indicate that 1,062 valid species of fishes live in Gabonese waters, with 288 of these strictly restricted to freshwaters, 592 strictly restricted to marine environments and 182...

This study presents a multiple regression of the parameter K, i.e., the rate at which the asymptote of the von Bertalanffy Growth Function (VBGF) is approached vs. the asymptotic weight (W∞), environmental temperature (T’), and an index of activity level (the aspect ratio of the caudal fin, or A) in 4251 populations and 1155 fish species extracted...

A report by leading fisheries experts shares novel analysis on the scale, context, and impacts of the age-old fishing practice of bottom trawling. The report shares new data and analysis combined with policy recommendations to inspire constructive action around this controversial practice.

The Chaetognatha are a marine invertebrate phylum including 132 extant, carnivorous species in nine families and two orders, but with unclear protostomian affinities in the animal kingdom. We document the gradual recognition of the distinctiveness of chaetognaths by early taxonomists, with some emphasis on the often-overlooked studies by Chinese ma...

Following a brief review of their biology, this contribution is an attempt to provide a global overview of the catches of mesopelagic fishes (of which 2.68 million tonnes were officially reported to the FAO) throughout the world ocean from 1950 to 2018, to serve as a baseline to a future development of these fisheries. The overview is based on a th...

As concepts, taxa should be addressed through their name, their description (definition by intension) or their content (definition by extension). Each part of this taxonomic triplet is necessary but none alone sufficient to fully formalize a taxon without ambiguity. However, in practice, taxa are most often only addressed through their name and the...

The checklist of Tanaidacea of Greece was developed in the framework of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) project and coordinated by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research during the period 2013-2015. By applying the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS) of this project, a complete checklist of species recorded from Greek Seas ha...

The checklist of Stomatopoda of Greece was developed in the framework of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) project, coordinated by the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC) of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR). The application of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS) of this project ha...

The rationale and a strategy for the estimation of length‐weight relationships (LWR) using preserved specimens of less common fish species in museums is presented, along with preliminary results pertaining to 56 specimens and 31 species of fish from the Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia, the Marine Biological Specimen Museum of Chinese Academy o...

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum (BBM), at the University of British Columbia, houses over two million biological research specimens, with nearly 40% of the specimen records digitized into databases, unlocking a wealth of information for research and teaching (Table 1). However, these collection databases were neither available nor unified for users....

Although still strongly intertwined, taxonomy and systematics are diverging more and more in their paradigms, methods, and agendas: it is not possible to consider them as synonyms anymore. While taxonomy remains an analytical science based on abductive reasoning (trying to find the historical pathways leading to present species delineations), syste...

Taxon concepts are complex, dynamic representations of the real world that are labelled with scientific names designating them. While names, taxa and classifications should be managed separately in databases (Bourgoin et al. 2019, Gallut et al. 2005), students may have difficulty comprehending the dynamic nature of the link between the three entiti...

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and services used by scientists to perform research and support innovation. A number of EU research infrastructures [e.g. e-Science and Technology European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research (LifeWatch) European Research Iinfrastructures Consortium (ERIC); The European lif...

The World Register of marine Cave Species (WoRCS) constitutes a Thematic Species Database of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). It was launched in 2016 by 8 founding Thematic Editors and the WoRMS Data Management Team with the aim to create a comprehensive taxonomic and ecological database of species known from marine caves and anchialin...

The potential of subterranean environments as models to address major evolutionary and ecological questions has been highlighted in the literature. They represent partially isolated, discrete units offering several replicates of the same evolutionary processes. Species occurrence data of these environments is abundant, although sparse in the litera...

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and services used by the scientific community to conduct research and foster innovation. LifeWatch ERIC has developed various virtual research environments, which include many virtual laboratories (vLabs) offering high computational capacity and comprehensive collaborative platforms that supp...

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and services used by the scientific community to conduct research and foster innovation. LifeWatch ERIC has developed various virtual research environments, which include many virtual laboratories (vLabs) offering high computational capacity and comprehensive collaborative platforms that supp...

The Catalogue of Life (CoL) is the nearest thing to a comprehensive catalogue of all known species of organisms on Earth. Continuous progress is made towards completion, and this edition contains 1,744,204 living and 59,284 extinct species. Please note that this is probably just over three quarters of the world's known species. This means that for...

Research Infrastructures (RIs) are facilities, resources and services used by the scientific community to conduct research and foster innovation. LifeWatch ERIC has developed various virtual research environments, which include many virtual laboratories (vLabs) offering high computational capacity and comprehensive collaborative platforms that supp...

Taxonomy is a scientific discipline that has provided the universal naming and classification system of biodiversity for centuries and continues effectively to accommodate new knowledge. A recent publication by Garnett and Christidis [1] expressed concerns regarding the difficulty that taxonomic changes represent for conservation efforts and propos...

The World Register of Marine species (WoRMS) has been established for a decade. The early history of the database involved compilation of existing global and regional species registers. This aggregation, combined with changes to data types and the changing needs of WoRMS users, has resulted in an evolution of data-entry consistency over time. With...

A list of the marine fish species occurring in the French EEZ was assembled from more than 500 references. No updated list has been published since the 19th century, although incomplete versions were available in several biodiversity information systems. The list contains 729 species distributed in 185 families. It is a preliminary step for the Atl...

Data produced within marine and terrestrial biodiversity research projects that evaluate and monitor Good Environmental Status, have a high potential for use by stakeholders involved in environmental management. However, environmental data, especially in ecology, are not readily accessible to various users. The specific scientific goals and the log...

Data providers in the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) network are not just recording species occurrences, they are also recording sampling methodology details and measuring environmental and biotic variables. In order to make OBIS an effective data sharing platform, it needs to be able to store and exchange these data in such a way th...

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) aims to integrate smaller, isolated datasets into a larger, more comprehensive picture of life in our oceans. Therefore, OBIS provides a gateway to many datasets containing information on where and when marine species have been observed. The datasets within OBIS are contributed by a network of hundr...

Background Fish classifications, as those of most other taxonomic groups, are being transformed drastically as new molecular phylogenies provide support for natural groups that were unanticipated by previous studies. A brief review of the main criteria used by ichthyologists to define their classifications during the last 50 years, however, reveals...

As reservoirs of sponge diversity, marine caves have attracted the interest of sponge researchers from around the world at an early stage. The need to compile all the existing largely scattered information on the sponge diversity of this unique ecosystem has been recently recognized and some regional overviews came out. The World Register of marine...

Data produced by biodiversity research projects that evaluate and monitor Good Environmental Status have a high potential for use by stakeholders involved in [marine] environmental management. The lack of specific scientific objectives, poor organizational logic, and a characteristically disorganized collection of information leads to a decentraliz...

The Catalogue of Life (CoL) is the nearest thing to a comprehensive catalogue of all known species of organisms on Earth. Continuous progress is made towards completion, and this edition contains 1,664,506 living and 49,346 extinct species. Please note that this is probably just over three quarters of the world's known species. This means that for...

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is the world’s most comprehensive online, open-access database of marine species distributions. OBIS grows with millions of new species observations every year. Contributions come from a network of hundreds of institutions, projects and individuals with common goals: to build a scientific knowledge...

Data produced by biodiversity research projects that evaluate and monitor Good Environmental Status have a high potential for use by stakeholders involved in [marine] environmental management. The lack of specific scientific objectives, poor organizational logic, and a characteristically disorganized collection of information leads to a decentraliz...

The Greek Taxon Information System is an initiative of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) that is resuming efforts to compile a complete checklist of all species reported from the Greek territory. Such an effort is necessary as a requirement for all signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Greece is a signatory since...

Background Biodiversity data is characterized by its cross-disciplinary character, the extremely broad range of data types and structures, and the variety of semantic concepts that it encompasses. Furthermore there is a plethora of different data sources providing resources for the same piece of information in a heterogeneous way. Even if we restri...

Background Biodiversity data is characterized by its cross-disciplinary character, the extremely broad range of data types and structures, and the plethora of different data sources providing resources for the same piece of information in a heterogeneous way. Since the web inception two decades ago, there are multiple initiatives to connect, aggreg...

Background The benthic macrofaunal biodiversity of the southeastern Mediterranean is considerably understudied compared to other Mediterranean regions. Monitoring biodiversity in this area is crucial as this region is particularly susceptible to biological invasions and temperature alteration. Historical biodiversity data could provide a useful ba...

The checklist of Porifera of Greece was created in the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an initiative of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) that has resumed efforts to compile a complete checklist of species recorded from Greece. An updated checklist of Porifera was created on the basis of a list of the Aegea...

The first attempt to compile the checklist of Cumacea of Greece was made in the context of the "Greek Biodiversity Database" project (2005-2008) coordinated by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Since then, only scattered information on new elements of the Greek cumacean fauna has been available. The objectives of the present study were to u...

The checklist of Mysida and Lophogastrida of Greece was created within the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), which is one of the applications of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) resuming efforts to develop a complete checklist of species recorded and reported from Greek waters. The objectives of the present...

Until today, only scattered species records of Brachiopoda from Greece have been included in publications on the Mediterranean brachiopod fauna. These records were mostly based on material collected during marine expeditions in the eastern Mediterranean decades ago, while few recent additional records appear in ecological studies. The aim of this p...

The checklist of the ascidian fauna (Tunicata: Ascidiacea) of Greece was compiled within the framework of the Greek Taxon Information System (GTIS), an application of the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) aiming to produce a complete checklist of species recorded from Greece. This checklist was constructed by updating an existing one...

Checklist of Brachiopoda of Greece

Checklist of Porifera of Greece

Extended Measurement or Facts

Checklist of Cumacea (Arthropoda: Malacostraca) of Greece