Missions of ACSI-II?
We know that the order Cypriniformes is an incredibly diverse group of freshwater fishes with great diversity in their life histories, morphologies, behaviors, physiologies, etc.! Many people are very interested in these fishes for research purposes and their conservation status, diversity, evolutionary relationships, and as interesting species in their aquaria- they make great tank species!
Unfortunately, despite the great diversity of species in this group and the great diversity of interests people share for these fishes worldwide, this group of fishes is really poorly known with respect to the number of species AND their evolutionary relationships, both incredibly important aspects to humans developing a biological classicfication for the fishes so that we have a sound foundation of diversity and evolutionary history. Huge areas on our planet have never been invengoried for these fishses for natural history studies and documentation of diversity but are predicted to harbor many undescribed species. Most of these have never ever been sampled by scientists to describe them. This is one of the the primary foci of ACSI-II (All Cypriniformes Species Inventory) initiative. The second focus of this international project is to better understand how many species of Cypriniformes species exist and where these species occur on our planet. With these to components of information then scientists, hobbiests, and people with a general interest in Cypriniformes fishes will be in a better position to both study the individual fishes to learn more about some of their amazing biological qualities, explore a vast number of evolutionary questions, and conserve the diversity of species that often live in "endangered" habitats and are the result of millions of years of evolutionary history.
The classification and evolutionary relationships of Cypriniformes has largely been ignored by scientists, except for a few studies that have focused on relatively small groups. Why? We suspect that the idea of tackling such a large and diverse group of fishes with many groups being very similar in their morphologies - was likely a great deterrent to many as a group to study. Advances have come recently in understanding evolutionary relationships through the Cypriniformes Tree of Life and other studies by independent researchers. However, our real understanding of the diversity of this group is remarkably poor. Hence, until recently we really knew very little about the species diversity in many areas of the world, what the major groups are and their constituent species, and the evolutionary relationships. Recent years have brought numerous phylogenetic systematic studies that have begun to tease out relationships of species, genera, and families. These advancements came primarly through the focused CToL (Cypriniformes Tree of Life) initiative.
The All Cypriniformes Species Inventory - II is also focused on continuing to decipher evolutionary relationships but its major focus is on inventoring different areas of our planet for what species of fishes occur there and of these, what are the species of Cypriniformes and are they in need of formal taxonomic description and classification. Only through the formal taxonomic description where the species is christened with a latin name and the species classification can we begin to centralize all types of information about the species based on its unique name. Thus, both objectives are accomplished in parallel and are extremely important to all cultures, all types of biologists, all types of hobbiests, and to humans in general as we face a period in human history where knowing what species and their condition in the wild is extremely important as indicators of our own future.
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