Application of Indicators of Knowledge Has More Than Enough Biodiversity for Diagnose and Comparison of Biological Collections
Most biological collections from Colombian museums lack diagnosis, which prevent to anmize and to know it real state in qualitative and quantitative terms. To solve this problem it has been proposed some biodiversity indicators, which can be used on biological collections data bases, allowing museums to define it condition, priorities and to register it contribution to country biodiversity.
There are basic criteria to elaborate indicators such as: scientific validation, data availability and reliability; the later including representativity, sensibility, simplicity, relevance and utility among others. They are necessary to support each indicator as part of the methodological sheet. The indicators proposed are used to compare the same biological group: (i). Between different collections; as this study case: Museo Javeriano - MUJ against Museo de Historia Natural Marina de Colombia- MHNMC and (ii). One Museum against a total reported for the country or the world.
The indicators used were: representativity and complementarity, both in taxonomic as in geographic terms; danger species; taxonomy identification; data completeness, sampled intensity, and metadata index. The indicators showed the following results for the MUJ collection: registred species 30 hermatipic corals; absent species, 52 ahermatipic corals; sampling in three ecoregions in the country, temporal, 91.6% of the material collected recently, 2004; spatial distribution of the specimens collected, 6 ecoregions along the colombian Caribbean; taxonomic representativeness, 50% against MHNMC and 26% against a total documented in the Caribbean; curatory level, 94.4% material identify to species; danger species included in the collection, 17.6%; family with more repetitions, Faviidae, and most representative; Agariciidae. The use of indicators increases the collection utility, disclosure (country biodiversity) and specialization through the documented information. They allows museums to make diagnosis for each collection in order to establish management priorities and optimization of the economical resources.
