Latest version of HEXACORALLIANS OF THE WORLD released!

The latest version of HEXACORALLIANS OF THE WORLD has just been released.

In addition to the continually growing number of occurrence records (nearly 
50,000) for sea anemones, scleractinian corals, antipatharians, cerianthids, 
and zoanthids, new kinds of data and new tools are now available at 
http://geoportal.kgs.ku.edu/hexacoral/anemone2/index.cfm

The KGSMapper tool now has 52 environmental datasets for habitat inference 
(all at half-degree resolution, gridded in register); many datasets for 
benthic parameters have been added.  You can now upload organism occurrence 
data to be analyzed by KGSMapper, either separately from data in any database 
with which KGSMapper is associated, or in conjunction with data from such a 
database.  50% of the locality data can be withheld from an analysis to use to 
assess the goodness of the analysis.

A module entitled “Scleractinian Corals and other Hexacorallians of the 
Northwestern Hawai'ian Islands” can be found through Hexacorallians of the 
World, or accessed directly 
(http://geoportal.kgs.ku.edu/hexacoral/hawaii/biodata).  On this site, which 
focuses on the hexacorals and environment of the Hawai’ian Islands 
(including Johnston Atoll), is a version of KGSMapper that has high-resolution 
environmental data nested into the half-degree cells.  Currently this is 
restricted to bathymetric data at 2’ resolution but other datasets are being 
prepared.

Information on date of record, museum specimens, habitat, etc. are now 
available, and all pages are downloadable as XML.  Complete lists of nominal 
and valid species of hexacorals are also downloadable.

Please try the new, improved HEXACORALLIANS OF THE WORLD and let us know how 
we can make it still better (Daphne Fautin: fautin@ku.edu; Bob Buddemeier: 
buddrw@kgs.ku.edu).

Thanks to NBII, OBIS, and Census of Marine Life for funds that have made these 
upgrades possible.

Daphne G. Fautin
Professor, University of Kansas
Curator, KU Natural History Museum

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
1200 Sunnyside Drive
Lawrence, KS 66045  USA
http://www.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/
Source: MARINE-B@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE

Best,

Jorge Brenner