“Antarctic echinoids”: An interactive database on CDROM

Abstract

“Antarctic echinoids” is an interactive database synthesizing the results of more than 100 years of Antarctic expeditions. It comprises information about 81 echinoid species present southward of the Antarctic convergence. It includes illustrated keys for determination of the species, and information about their morphology and ecology (text, illustrations, and glossary), their distribution (maps and histograms of bathymetrical distribution); the sources of the information (bibliography, collections and expeditions) are also provided. All those data (taxonomic, morphologic, geographic, bathymétrie.) can be interactively queried in two main ways, (i) Browsing through sorted lists on the screen or print-outs, (ii) Process interactive requests joining the different kinds of data. Many other possibilities are offered, and an on-line help facility is available.