Occurrence data of some marine invertebrates and freshwater crabs housed in the natural history collection at the National Museums of Kenya
Latest version published by National Museums of Kenya on May 26, 2020
The Kenyan aquatic systems comprising of both marine and freshwater ecosystems is rich in biodiversity. The Kenyan coastline covers about 640 Km long and is characterized by different habitats including coral reefs, mangrove forests, seagrass beds, rocky shores and cliffs, lagoons and the open sea. These biodiversity plays important roles including human food sources, ecosystem functions including nutrient cycling and food web dynamics, as ecosystem engineers, pollinations, potential sources of medicine while coral reefs provide bio-physical support to other critical habitats such as sea-grasses and mangroves. However, these biodiversity faces numerous threats such as destruction of their natural habitats, overharvesting and overexploitation, pollution, invasive species coupled with global warming with many more species likely disappearing even before being discovered and archived. About 1800 marine faunal species are documented in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) Region (Richmond, 2002). Despite the documentation, only a few species are archived in the natural history collection at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). This greatly hampers marine taxonomic research hence the reliance on other international museums housing similar species for identification based on type specimen material (holotype/syntype). Museum scientific collections provide irreplaceable resources that are important in taxonomic, biogeographic and evolutionary research studies. Hence, marine researchers in are highly encouraged to deposit scientific specimens, in natural history collection at NMK, as scientific reference material. NMK is the custodian of Kenya’s natural heritage. Here, we provide a data-subset of some important Kenyan marine biodiversity data archived in the Invertebrate Zoology Section at NMK. These include 43 species of crabs mostly mangrove crabs, 3 species of Barnacles, 7 species of mangrove molluscs, 33 species of ornamental molluscs used in shell trade, 3 species of exclusive marine commercial mollusks, 3 species of commercial prawns, 3 species of commercial lobsters, 15 species of echinoderms and 15 species of corals. Also included are some 9 species of fresh water crabs in Kenya.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 136 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Downloads
Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:
| Data as a DwC-A file | download 136 records in English (12 KB) - Update frequency: unknown |
|---|---|
| Metadata as an EML file | download in English (16 KB) |
| Metadata as an RTF file | download in English (11 KB) |
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Kochey J, Gikungu M, Kairo J G, Kioko E, Obudho P A, Canicci S, Mkare T K (2020): Occurrence data of some marine invertebrates and freshwater crabs housed in the natural history collection at the National Museums of Kenya. v1.4. National Museums of Kenya. Dataset/Occurrence. http://ipt.museums.or.ke/ipt/resource?r=marine&v=1.4
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is National Museums of Kenya. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 6d2b478b-5670-4889-a567-8ae95f9b282e. National Museums of Kenya publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Kenya.
Keywords
Occurrence; Specimen
Contacts
Who created the resource:
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Geographic Coverage
Mainly along the Kenyan coast and some inland waters in Kenya and Tanzania
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-7.798, 34.014], North East [5.091, 41.309] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
No Description available
| Order | Decapods (Crabs), Carideans (Prawns), Gastropods (molluscs), Scleractinia (corals) |
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Project Data
The Kenyan aquatic systems comprising of both marine and freshwater ecosystems is rich in biodiversity. The Kenyan coastline covers about 640 Km long and is characterized by different habitats including coral reefs, mangrove forests, seagrass beds, rocky shores and cliffs, lagoons and the open sea. These biodiversity plays important roles including human food sources, ecosystem functions including nutrient cycling and food web dynamics, as ecosystem engineers, pollinations, potential sources of medicine while coral reefs provide bio-physical support to other critical habitats such as sea-grasses and mangroves. However, these biodiversity faces numerous threats such as destruction of their natural habitats, overharvesting and overexploitation, pollution, invasive species coupled with global warming with many more species likely disappearing even before being discovered and archived. About 1800 marine faunal species are documented in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) Region (Richmond, 2002). Despite the documentation, only a few species are archived in the natural history collection at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK). This greatly hampers marine taxonomic research hence the reliance on other international museums housing similar species for identification based on type specimen material (holotype/syntype). Museum scientific collections provide irreplaceable resources that are important in taxonomic, biogeographic and evolutionary research studies. Hence, marine researchers in are highly encouraged to deposit scientific specimens, in natural history collection at NMK, as scientific reference material. NMK is the custodian of Kenya’s natural heritage. Here, we provide a data-subset of some important Kenyan marine biodiversity data archived in the Invertebrate Zoology Section at NMK. These include 43 species of crabs mostly mangrove crabs, 3 species of Barnacles, 7 species of mangrove molluscs, 33 species of ornamental molluscs used in shell trade, 3 species of exclusive marine commercial mollusks, 3 species of commercial prawns, 3 species of commercial lobsters, 15 species of echinoderms and 15 species of corals. Also included are some 9 species of fresh water crabs in Kenya.
| Title | Occurrence data of some marine invertebrates and freshwater crabs housed in natural history collection at the National Museums of Kenya |
|---|---|
| Funding | Earthwatch Institute UK, Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute, University of Florence, Italy,Kenyatta University, Kenya Forest Service, UNDP, Kenya Wildlife Service/ Ramsar |
| Study Area Description | Wet and dry preserved collection at NMK. Most of the recent material (year 2009-2013) were part of the collections from MSC studies of the first author on mangrove crabs at Gazi-Bay Kenya (https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/6979) while other were collected during different times along the Kenyan coast. Others are part of the scientific collection housed at Invertebrate Zoology Section which had not been identified or databased. |
| Design Description | Most of the specimens were collected using different methods including direct hand collection, fishing nets, dip nets and traps along the Kenyan coastline. Other specimens are housed in the natural history collection at Invertebrate Zoology Section, NMK. The specimen are preserved either in ethanol and as dry specimens after correct identification. Species data was captured in excel spreadsheet and data was aligned to the Darwin core standards before publishing through museum IPT. |
The personnel involved in the project:
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 6d2b478b-5670-4889-a567-8ae95f9b282e |
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| http://ipt.museums.or.ke/ipt/resource?r=marine |