Poking around on the linkurl:iSpecies blog;http://ispecies.blogspot.com/2006/01/antweb-google-earth-map.html today, I found a comment alerting readers to linkurl:an interesting little tool;http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/DEVmapform.php on the online version of __Practical Fishkeeping__, "the UK's best-selling aquarium magazine." Fish Mapper is an applet that plots fish distribution data, culled from an online service called linkurl:FishBase;http://www.Fishbase.org , using Google Maps. For each specimen the map illustrates where it was isolated (latitude/longitude data), its museum accession number, and the year of harvest. The tool is similar to linkurl:AntWeb;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15878/ , which we covered this past November. AntWeb, the California Academy of Sciences' online resource for all things "ant-y", allows users -- lay and scientist alike -- to browse or search the Academy's extensive collection of ant specimens within Google Earth, which overlays the collection (that is, where the samples were isolated) on a world map or satellite image. I expect we'll see more specimen collections making their way onto Google Earth...

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