Bioinformatics Center at the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, India since its inception in 1990 has always been concentrating their efforts in computerization of the coastal and marine biodiversity of Indian waters. With this aim in mind, this Center has developed "CDROM on Marine Prawns of India" which was the first amongst its series "NIO's Database on Marine Life of India (NIODMLI)". CDROM on Marine Prawns was released by Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, Government of India in a function held on January 17, 1998 at Goa.
This second "CDROM
on Marine Crabs of India" in its series "NIO's Database on Marine
Life of India (NIODMLI)" has been developed to aid researchers, academicians,
planners, administrators, commercial houses, students and common man. This
CDROM collates information on about 75 Brachyuran crabs that occurs in
the estuarine and marine waters of this country. Though, every efforts
has been made to collect all the available information on this group of
organisms, its a "Work in Progress" and hence if you come across any specific
shortcomings, please let us know so that we can present more full proof
version 2.0 of this product.
CRAB SEARCH
CRABS SEARCH is a search engine developed using JavaScript. This searches the contents of html pages. CRABS SEARCH consists of search on four sections viz. Identification, Systematics, Morphology and Biogeography. For each section four options (Entire Word, Word Contains, Word Begins With, Word Ends With) are available. After executing it provides the title of the html files as a result, which can be viewed using hypertext features.
IDENTIFICATION
Taxonomy or Systematics as it is called forms basic building block of nature. Without the proper identification of the organisms may it be plant or animal, proper usage and utilization becomes difficult. With the dwindling resources and heavy economic cuts and unstable political scenario, science of taxonomy has been neglected to the extent that once flourishing community of taxonomists, itself has become the extinct and rare species. Younger generations is not keen to acquire this knowledge as this does not stand them in today's competitive market. Over the years, efforts are being made to utilize the features of computer sciences and advancements of Information Technology (IT) to simplify and popularize the taxonomy so that many more youngsters can take up challenging tasks of listing millions of unknown species.
Here we have tried to utilize the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) which describes the documents in "logical succession/structure" of the documents. Infact, with our experience we have started believing that HTML would be the best suitable option to represent the hierarchical nature/arrangements of flora and fauna that this planet is bestowed with. "IDENTIFICATION" helps you in identifying any of the 75 crabs species for which information has been collated in this package. Wherever possible characters are explained with the help of line drawings.
SYSTEMATICS
Listing, understanding and remembering the position of specific plant or animal in the taxonomical hierarchy is as difficult as identifying the species. To aid the community ranging from researchers to academicians, teachers to students, planners to implimentors, SYSTEMATICS has been developed to enlist the taxonomic hierarchy of any of the 75 prawns species.
MORPHOLOGY
Though all the 75 species belongs to one single group, still they differ from each other in one or many ways. This is best learnt through morphology, which explains the general as well as characters specific to individual species. In this section, major distinctive characters along with the line drawing has been collated which forms one of the essential section for researchers, students and academicians.
BIOGEOGRAPHY
These species occurs at one or many places under varied environmental conditions in the waters of this country. BIOGEOGRAPHY maps the presence of these species all along waters bordering India. This further lists the worldwide distribution of the species. It further enlists the environmental conditions which are best suitable for occurrence of individual species.
LIFE CYCLE
From egg to adult there are three phases which each crab undergoes. With the help of flow diagram, effort has been made to depict the general cycle of birth and growth of the crabs.
FISHERY/CULTURE
Second to prawn fishery, crabs are being looked as potential species for mass and commercial fishery. Soon CRABERIES will become common word to all of us. This section while enlisting the status of crab culture and fishery, techniques used in traditional and commercial crab fishing has been depicted.
COLLECTION/PRESERVATION
This section briefs the most commonly used collection and preservation techniques for use of crabs for study purpose.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Much work has been done on the crabs. Here we have made an effort to list the major publications of the crabs of India. Major source has been the individual collection of our experts. Apart from this out put from Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstract (ASFA) too has proved helpful in making this list near complete. We have grouped these publications/references in 14 sections. Lastly we have also carried out extensive search on the Internet. Though we were disappointed to a great extent, we realized that there is potential for publishing information about crabs (off course apart from recipes) on the Net.
WORKERS IN INDIA
It was interesting for us to know, who is working on what aspect of crab in India. This has resulted into extensive list of experts and their specialization. We truly feel that this will be one of the important contribution of ours for those who intends to peruse carrier in crabs.
GLOSSARY
Most commonly used words in this package has been described/defined in this section.
ABOUT THIS CDROM
Current document which briefly explains various sections and features of this CDROM.
BIOINFORMATICS CENTER
Section that talks
about the Bioinformatics facility at the National Institute of Oceanography
and its achievements.