Freshwater fauna in Spain in the mid-19th Century
Citation
Blanco-Garrido F, Clavero M (2024). Freshwater fauna in Spain in the mid-19th Century. Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC). Sampling event dataset https://doi.org/10.15470/brt4qr accessed via GBIF.org on 2024-08-25.Description
We extracted records of freshwater fauna (mainly, but not exclusively, fish) from the geographic dictionary edited by Pascual Madoz (henceforth ‘the Madoz’), which involved an exhaustive standardized survey of several descriptors of the Spanish territory in the mid-19th century. The Madoz was published between 1845 and 1850 in 16 volumes and contained information on some 70,000 Spanish population centers, rivers and topographical accidents. This work provides a rigorous national inventory of the socio-economic status of all settlements as well as their natural resources, including records of plant and animal species, both wild and domestic. Most mentions to freshwater fauna in the Madoz are reported either when describing rivers and wetlands or as a ‘production’ from a village, together with crops, livestock and game species. Some mentions are also associated to the heading ‘terrain’, although this is much less frequent. We converted these mentions into 10,750 usable records of 39 freshwater-associated taxa from 5,472 localities. These data can be used to describe the historical distributions of several species, including emblematic ones such as Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser sturio; 21 records), European eel (Anguilla Anguilla; 2848 records), Brown trout (Salmo trutta; 3943 records), Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar; 258 records) and others. This knowledge will allow assessing range and niche expansion, contraction, and shifts, and should set the basis to identify conservation baselines to guide the management of freshwater systems.Purpose
The dataset can be used to reconstruct historical distributions of many species (mainly fishes and crustaceans), including emblematic and/or threatened species such as European eel, Atlantic salmon, Brown trout, Atlantic sturgeon, barbels and others, and establish reference distributions to assess range expansion, contraction and shifts.Sampling Description
Study Extent
The Madoz was published between 1845 and 1850 and contains information from both insular (Canary and Balearic archipelagos) and peninsular Spain. This extensive work reviews and incorporates the information from other previous sources, such as “Diccionario geográfico-estadístico de España y Portugal” (Miñano, 1826-1828), “Diccionario geográfico-histórico de España” (Martínez Marina, 1802) and others, although the bulk of the information comes from its own sampling. Data of the present freshwater fauna inventory are referred to both peninsular and insular Spain.Sampling
The dictionary published by Pascual Madoz (1845-1850) compiled systematic geographic, historical, and statistical information for Spanish villages, territories, rivers, and mountains. It was a vast work of 16 volumes involved the participation of over 1400 collaborators over a period of more than 15 years. The information about villages and cities was structured in a fixed manner across the text, although the length of the articles varied greatly in relation to the perceived importance of each population center. Under the headings “Productions”, “Rivers” or “Terrain” Madoz (1845–1850) listed the most important crops and livestock held in the village and often also included information on wildlife and fisheries. The 16 volumes of the work were downloaded from the Virtual Library of Andalusia (http://www.bibliotecavirtualdeandalucia.es) in pdf format with text recognition. For the preparation of this inventory, an active search was carried out applying a procedure that could be defined as snowballing. The search began with common (frequent) species, such as European eel, Brown trout or barbels (anguila, trucha or barbo in Spanish, respectively) throughout the 16 volumes of the Madoz, noting the name of the rest of freshwater fauna species that appeared with them. Next, the search for these new species was carried out, using the noted names and their variations. The process continued until no new names appeared.Quality Control
The data were collated from historical bibliographic sources and their quality can be assessed by considering the following points: The following quality aspects should be highlighted: - the species covered in the dataset are generally part of popular culture and thus easily identified, as most of the species mentioned were directly exploited (fisheries); - the people who responded to the questionnaires lived from and interacted with their natural resources, for which it can argued that they transmitted first-hand information; - the data have been carefully verified by independent collators. Verifications took place over different phases of the data mining process: (1) the elaboration of the final list of species (or higher-level taxa) was agreed between different experts (the authors); (2) the georeferentiation of the surveyed localities (sampling events) was verified by another person; (3) the final formatting according to GBIF standards was verified by a GBIF expert (Katia Cezón); - the data are overall consistent with expert knowledge (e.g. according to their ecological niche and potential distributions). - data from Madoz‘s dictionary have already been used for research and published in peer-reviewed journals (see examples below). 1. Nores, C. and López-Bao, J. V. (2022). Historical data to inform the legal status of species in Europe: an example with the wolves. Biological Conservation 272, 109639. 2. Ramos-Merchante, A., Sáez-Gómez, P. and Prenda, J. (2021). Historical distribution of freshwater fishes and the reference conditions concept in a large Mediterranean basin. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 31(4), 888-9023. 3. Clavero, M., Ninyerola, M., Hermos, V., Filipe, A. F., Pla, M., Villero, D., Brontons, L. and Delibes, M. (2017). Historical citizen science to understand and predict climate-driven trout decline. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284 (1846), 20161979. 4. Clavero, M. and Hermoso, V. (2015). Historical data to plan the recovery of the European eel. Journal of Applied Ecology 52: 960-968. 5. Clavero, M. and Villero, D. (2014) Historical ecology and invasion biology: long-term distribution changes of introduced freshwater species. Bioscience 64: 145-153. 6. Granado-Lorencio, C. (1991). The effect of man on the fish fauna of the River Guadalquivir, Spain. Fisheries Research 12 (2): 91-100. The following limitations should be considered when analyzing and interpreting these data: - species (or higher taxa) occurrence records were reported by citizens (non-experts) in the 19th century. Identification errors and variable vernacular names might lead to wrong interpretations and false presence records; - the species occurrence data should be interpreted as presence-only, meaning that absences can be due to unreported species. But see Clavero and Hermoso 2015 for an example of how these data can be used to obtain informed –i.e, not random- pseudo-absences, based on the distribution of the available information; - the amount of information provided in the Madoz varied across areas, so that there are spatial biases in the amount of data collected across Spain. - The inventory is not an exhaustive list of species, but rather a list of species of interest for the local human populations (mainly as food resource). Small species tended to remain unmentioned or were rarely cited; - In the cases of village, the geographical coordinates provided for each locality correspond to a point (roughly the centroid of the village), so this not represent the exact localization of the species (or taxa) citation in the Madoz. However, note that the villages are usually located close to river courses or wetlands.Method steps
- Procedure to collate data: i. Extraction of the information from the 16 volumes by an active search using keywords (as described above) and recording it in a digital spreadsheet, including fishes, crustaceans, annelids, reptiles, amphibians and mammals at each location (i.e. each sampling event). ii. Georeference each sampling event (i.e., each location) by searching for the location based on its name and recording the geographical coordinates of its centroid. This was done using Google Earth. iii. Assign each sampling event to a specific watershed by using a GIS approach. iv. Harmonise all the taxonomy by searching for synonyms of vernacular names and assigning them a unique scientific name based of the GBIF's taxonomic backbone. When records could not be identified to the species level, the lowest possible taxonomic level was assigned (e.g., genus, family, order). Vague terms implying taxonomic levels higher than order or terms not related to taxonomical categories were discarded (e.g., "fish" or fishery” (“peces” or “ pesca” in Spanish words, respectively)). v. Reformat data according to GBIF's standards and compile the data using the Darwin Core Standard. The data were compiled and published using the Spanish Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT; https://ipt.gbif.es/).
Additional info
List of variables and respective descriptions 1. Data "Events": > eventID: the unique identifier of the site (numeric identifier). > decimalLongitude: longitude of the site in decimal degrees (unprojected WGS84; georeferenced in Google Earth). > decimalLatitude: latitude of the site in decimal degrees (unprojected WGS84; georeferenced in Google Earth). > verbatimLocality: the name of the site as mentioned in the Madoz’s dictionary. > geodeticDatum: the geodetic datum of the site´s geographical coordinates. > stateProvince: the name of the province in which the site occurs. > eventRemarks: the volume of the Madoz’s dictionary in which the site (event) is published. > eventDate: the year in which the volume was published. > waterBody: the watershed in which the site (event) is located. > locationID: equal to the eventID (but preceded by "site"; character identifier). > country: the country where the data were collected. All sites (events) correspond to Spain except one that is located in Portugal (eventID: 5425). > countryCode: the international code of the country where the data were collected > samplingProtocol: a brief reference to the sampling protocol (in this case, the data were extracted from a national inventory). 2. Data "Occurrences": > eventID: the unique identifier of the site (numeric identifier). > decimalLongitude: longitude of the site in decimal degrees (unprojected WGS84; georeferenced in Google Earth). > decimalLatitude: latitude of the site in decimal degrees (unprojected WGS84; georeferenced in Google Earth). > occurrenceRemarks: the volume of the Madoz’s dictionary in which the occurrence is published. > eventDate: the year in which the volume was published. > waterBody: the watershed in which the site (event) is located. > scientificName: the scientific name of the reported taxa assigned to a given taxonomic category following the GBIF taxonomic backbone (alternative taxa equally plausible are given in the field identificationQualifier). > occurrenceStatus: whether the taxon was mentioned and thus assumed to be present in the site (only mentioned, "present" taxa are included) > occurrenceID: unique identifier of the record (a given species in a given locality) > basisOfRecord: how the data were sampled (all observations were reported by interviewed people; "HumanObservation") > vernacularName: the names of the taxa as reported by the interviewed people (list of common names) > institutionCode: the acronym of the institution having custody of the dataset > collectionCode: the name of the dataset within the institution having its custody > kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, ScientificNameAuthorship, specificEpithet, infraspecificEpithet: full taxonomic classification of the observed taxa following the GBIF taxonomic backbone > identificationQualifier: scientific names of other(s) possible taxa corresponding to the vernacularName (NA: not applicable). > identificationRemarks: further considerations concerning the taxonomic classification of the reported taxa (NA: not applicable). > degreeOfEstablishment: this field was used to differentiate "native" taxa from "introduced" ones.Taxonomic Coverages
Freshwater fauna commonly identified by people with knowledge of the territory and natural resources, including fish (33 taxa), crustaceans (1), annelids (1), reptiles (1), amphibians (1) and mammals (2)
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Animaliacommon name: Animals rank: kingdom
Geographic Coverages
Spain (insular and peninsular territory), except one site that is located in Portugal (eventID: 5425)
Bibliographic Citations
- Clavero, M. and Hermoso, V. (2015). Historical data to plan the recovery of the European eel. Journal of Applied Ecology 52: 960-968. -
- Clavero, M. and Villero, D. (2014) Historical ecology and invasion biology: long-term distribution changes of introduced freshwater species. Bioscience 64: 145-153. -
- Clavero, M., Ninyerola, M., Hermos, V., Filipe, A. F., Pla, M., Villero, D., Brontons, L. and Delibes, M. (2017). Historical citizen science to understand and predict climate-driven trout decline. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284 (1846), 20161979. -
- Granado-Lorencio, C. (1991). The effect of man on the fish fauna of the River Guadalquivir, Spain. Fisheries Research 12 (2): 91-100. -
- Nores, C. and López-Bao, J. V. (2022). Historical data to inform the legal status of species in Europe: an example with the wolves. Biological Conservation 272, 109639. -
- Ramos-Merchante, A., Sáez-Gómez, P. and Prenda, J. (2021). Historical distribution of freshwater fishes and the reference conditions concept in a large Mediterranean basin. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 31(4), 888-9023. -
Contacts
Francisco Blanco-Garridooriginator
position: Técnico Superior CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: paquito.blanco@gmail.com
Miguel Clavero
originator
position: Científico Titular CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: miguelito.clavero@gmail.com
Francisco Blanco-Garrido
metadata author
position: Técnico Superior CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: paquito.blanco@gmail.com
Miguel Clavero
metadata author
position: Científico Titular CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: miguelito.clavero@gmail.com
Francisco Blanco-Garrido
author
position: Técnico Superior CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: paquito.blanco@gmail.com
Miguel Clavero
author
position: Científico Titular CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: miguelito.clavero@gmail.com
Francisco Blanco-Garrido
administrative point of contact
position: Técnico Superior CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: paquito.blanco@gmail.com
Miguel Clavero
administrative point of contact
position: Científico Titular CSIC
Estación Biológica de Doñana (CSIC)
C/ Americo Vespucio, 26, Isla de la Cartuja
Sevilla
41092
Sevilla
ES
email: miguelito.clavero@gmail.com