The Cichlid Room Companion

The Cichlid Room Companion (CRC), is a non-scientific^[1][2] in the sense of non-peer-reviewed, membership-based webpage, dedicated to the fishes of the Cichlid family (Cichlidae). The site offers one of the most comprehensive, non-authoritative catalogues of cichlids in the web, which is illustrated with more than 19,724 photographs of fishes and 1012 of habitats, as well as 271 videos^[3] of cichlids and their habitats. It also “offers access to information about 146 full genera and 909 full species profiles”, a discussion forum,^[4] as well as various articles about taxonomy, natural history, fishkeeping, field accounts and collecting expeditions; mostly written by citizen scientists, personalities of the fish trade and people who specialize in cichlids. The site is administered by its creator and editor, Juan Miguel Artigas-Azas, a naturalist, whom is also an aquarist^[5] and a notorious nature photographer. The taxonomic summaries provided in the form of profiles that include taxonomic, distribution and natural history of the species and have been prepared by world class specialists. In 2008, the American Cichlid Association (ACA) awarded Artigas-Azas the Guy Jordan Retrospective Award, which is the maximum honor that association gives to people who have done extensive contributions to the International Cichlid Hobby.^[5]

According to FreeWebsiteReport.org, the CRC has been in business since 05-Sep-1996. As of November, 2014, it received 1,019 daily page views. The page is most popular in the United States, with 47.3% of its users from that country. It has an Alexa World Rank #1,079,009 and Google Pagerank 4/10.^[6]

Contributions to public understanding of Science

In the past decade, the Internet has fundamentally transformed the relationships between the scientific community and society as a whole, as the boundaries between public and private, professionals and hobbyists fade away; allowing for a wider range of participants to engage with science in unprecedented ways.^[7] The educational and citizens science task of the CRC has been acknowledged in the formal scientific literature, both as source of data, information and awareness among fish hobbyists about topics like the threat of releases of invasive species from domestic aquaria, as well as promoting ethical behavior in the fish hobby.^[8] Furthermore, while for the most part, the CRC is a popular resource, a number of articles in it have some academic value, and have been cited as primary sources in the scholarly literature.^[1][9][10]

Criticism

Biological systematics is a scientific discipline, which requires scientific training. It is often professed in the scientific community that reliable contention of scientific papers is restricted to scientific publications, that are backed up with scientific facts.^[11] "Hobby publications are non-scientific literature", and the scholarly use or discussion of names and other nomenclatural acts "dropped in hobby is entirely questionable".^[1][11] Hobby articles, both printed and electronic, are usually published on the approval of the editors, whereas in a scientific journal, by contrast, all articles are peer reviewed.^[12][13][14] Moreover, in the case of the CRC, the site is not edited by a person educated in systematics or with an advanced degree in ichthyology or a related field.^[15] As of January, 2015, the catalogue section in the CRC displayed a disclaimer^[16][17] stating that they are "not to be considered as published in the sense of the Code, and statements made therein are not made available for nomenclatural purposes". Even so, the site has been criticized for censoring taxonomic information based on its editor’s arbitrary, personal, subjective views (e.g. the synonymy of Paraneetroplus and Vieja sensu McMahan et al. 2010 (prior to 2015);^[18] the validity of Maylandia Meyer & Foerster 1984 vs its junior synonym Metriaclima Stauffer, J. R., Jr. and K. A. Kellogg 2002;^[19] the split of genus Nosferatu De la Maza-Benignos, et al. 2014^[20] from Herichthys,;^[19][21] or the recent review of the taxonomy and systematics of the herichthyns;^[22][23][24]), on the basis of an anticonventional argument that official, in the sense of the Code, nomenclatural acts^[25] are not “mandatory” (see editor’s comments^{[26][27][28][29]}). Indeed, some of the views have been corroborated by the scientific community, as has been the case of the genus Nosferatu that that is considered junior synonym of Herichthys,^[30][31] while the synonymy of Vieja and Paraneetroplus was not initially accepted in 2015 in the CRC, although in 2016^[31] it was proven that the genera are in fact not synonymous. The site fails to substantiate and scrutinize the taxonomic criteria which it applies,^[32] giving nowhere within its pages an explanation of the methods, systematic principles used, or the followed taxonomic authority (e.g. W. N. Eschmeyer’ s Catalog of fishes; Catalogue of Life; The Zoological Record; FishBase; Joseph S, Nelson’s Fishes of the world, etc.).

References

External links

• Official website
• The Freshwater Fishes of Mexico