FADA

Welcome to the Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA) Project:

The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA) is an informal network of scientists specialized in freshwater biodiversity.

The FADA database is an information system dedicated to freshwater animal species diversity and expert-based distribution information. The system provides access to authoritative species lists and global distribution compiled by world experts for the FADA book (see below). You can Browse or Search the database online.

We encourage experts who are interested to contribute to the FADA initiative to contact us to request the most recent template for submitting information on species and distributions (regional, local). All submissions will be peer-reviewed by a scientific editorial board of experts (see Groups) before being validated (about FADA).

Following a preliminary phase -supported by DIVERSITAS and the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique - French National Reseach Institute (CNRS)- to develop a gross estimate of the number of freshwater species ( Lévêque, C., E. V. Balian & K. Martens, 2005. An assessment of animal species diversity in continental water systems. Hydrobiologia 542: 39-67), the Belgian Science Policy Office (BelSPO), the Belgian Biodiversity Platform and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences provided the necessary support to launch the Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment in 2005.

This project consisted of a series of workshops in 2 phases:

• Phase 1- A global assessment of freshwater animal groups, which resulted in the publication of a special issue of Hydrobiologia and in the development of the FADA database, following the FADA workshop in October 2005.
• Phase 2- Analysis the data gathered for the FADA book and compiled in the FADA database. A workshop (see FADA Activities) investigating potential analyses was held in Bruges in December 2008.

• From 2010 to 2014, the FADA database received new attention in the framework of the FP7 BioFresh project. BioFresh adopted FADA as the taxonomic backbone for its Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal. The project also supported, together with Ghent University and VLIZ/LifeWatch Flanders a third FADA workshop. This workshop focussed on completing the freshwater checklists, especially for macro-invertebrate groups.
• In 2014 we initiated the two year project AquaRES ("Aquatic species Register Exchange and Services"). This Belspo funded BRAIN project represents a collaboration with the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) which hosts the World Register of Marine Species and the Marine Biology Laboratory of the ULB which is involved in the Register of Antarctic Marine Species. In the framework of this project, we aim to improve and extend the data in FADA by updating the import procedures and ensuring that relevant data is synchronised with the two other aquatic species registers.
• In May 2015, 4 leading European research institutes launched the Freshwater information Platform - freshwaterplatform.eu, which integrates FADA through the Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal and will hopefully foster the development of further follow-up initiatives.

In addition to the options to Browse or Search the database, the FADA checklist can be consulted in various ways.

• Pdf versions of the checklists are available on the Group pages.
• Data can be searched through the species search on the Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal.
• Since 22/06/2011 the FADA data are available in Darwin Core Archive format. Click here to download the current version, released on 26/06/2015.
• Since early 2013, selected checklist have been integrated in the Catalogue of Life.