Fish-SPRICH: a database of freshwater fish species richness throughout the World

Abstract

There is growing interest in large-scale approaches to ecology, for both plants and animals. In particular, macroecological studies enable examination of the patterns and determinants of species richness of a variety of groups of organism throughout the world, which might have important implications for prediction and mitigation of the consequences of global change. Here, we provide richness data for freshwater fishes, which, with more than 13,000 described species, comprise a quarter of all vertebrate species. We conducted an extensive literature survey of native, non-native (exotic), and endemic freshwater fish species richness. The resulting database, called Fish-SPRICH, contains data from more than 400 bibliographic sources including published papers, books, and grey literature sources. Fish-SPRICH contains richness values at the river basin grain for 1,054 river basins covering more than 80% of the earth’s continental surface. This database is currently the most comprehensive global database of native, non-native and endemic freshwater fish richness available at the river basin grain.