Corresponding authors: Maria Pitta Groz (
Academic editor: M.E. Bichuette
The collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I is a historical specimen, instrument, and document collection that has been housed at the Aquário Vasco da Gama since 1935. The collection is largely the result of several scientific campaigns conducted by Dom Carlos de Bragança between 1896 and 1907. Specifically, the ichthyological collection consists of 675 surviving catalogue records of specimens caught, acquired or offered to D. Carlos I between 1892 to 1907, and includes the type specimen for
Silva AS, Pitta Groz M, Leandro P, Assis CA, Figueira R (2018) Ichthyological collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I. ZooKeys 752: 137–148.
Silva AS, Pitta Groz M, Leandro P, Assis CA, Figueira R (2017) Ichthyological collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I. 675 records, published online,
Dom Carlos I, king of Portugal and the father of Portuguese oceanography (
The writings of D. Carlos I include eleven detailed annual reports of his oceanographic campaigns (
In his reports, D. Carlos I described, in great detail, the programme and objectives of each campaign, the sampling stations and materials used in each, their depth and benthic characteristics, and listed the specimens collected (
The collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I has been housed at the Aquário Vasco da Gama (
The wider collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I is made up of ichthyological, mammalian, ornithological, reptilian and a wide variety of invertebrate specimens, along with scientific instruments, and a rich scientific library that includes the king’s manuscripts and copies of his published works. This collection is of incalculable historical and scientific value as it is one of the few surviving royal Natural History collections in Portugal, most of which were destroyed in a fire at the Museu Bocage in 1978 (
Given the historical value of the collection and its wide faunal assemblage, a dataset of the ichthyological specimens housed at the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I was made available on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (
The objectives of the present paper are: (1) to present the existence and the composition of the ichthyological collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I, which comprises 675 records, captured between 1892 and 1907; and (2) to emphasise its importance, not only because of its historical value, but also due to its diversity and the rarity of some of the specimens within it. We also provide the historical context, and a summary catalogue of the taxa in the collection, and highlight some notable specimens.
The dataset is comprised of the ichthyological specimens from the collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I. These specimens consist of 675 catalogued records, composed of 5 classes, 35 orders, 119 families, 196 genera, and 236 species. There are between 590 and 600 specimens preserved in alcohol and formalin, and between 75 and 90 mounted specimens, collected between 1892 and 1907. Many specimens have accompanying collection data in the king’s manuscripts. The records include the holotype of
Number and percentage of the classes represented in the dataset.
Number and percentage of the orders represented in the dataset. Only the orders with at least 15 specimens are labelled.
Temporal profile of the sampling years of the specimens held in the ichthyological collection. Blue dots represent sampling years for each order, for which, in parentheses, the number of specimens is provided. The red curve shows the number of specimens collected per year.
Geographic area covered by the collection (in darker blue). Plots indicate sites for the 29 georeferenced records.
July 18, 1892–June 8, 1907
The first step of the current revision project was to isolate ichthyological records from the electronic catalogue, and check them for synonymy using both FishBase (
Once catalogue crosschecking was complete, specimen labels were compared to the final electronic catalogue, both to confirm the information and to check the location of the specimens. The crosschecking process also identified two mislabelled elasmobranch specimens, which were identified using Compagno’s Sharks of the World (1984). When mismatches were found, the information in the catalogue was substituted with the information from the specimen labels, including species names.
The last step in the creation of the electronic catalogue was to resolve naming inconsistencies. First, the species identification present on labels was checked for synonymy. Once valid names had been identified, the species range for each valid taxon was ascertained using FishBase (
For publication purposes, the records pertaining to the collection of the Museu Oceanográfico D. Carlos I were extracted from the electronic catalogue and transformed into a DarwinCore compatible Excel (Microsoft, Washington, 2016) spread sheet. The dataset was enriched with collection data taken from the king’s records of his oceanographic campaigns (
We would like to thank Paula Sousa from the Aquário Vasco da Gama for helping with the specimens’ label verification and location. We also thank Patrick Reis Santos, from MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal and School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia, and Nathan Kenny, from the Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom, for proof-reading our manuscript. Lastly, we would like to thank André Esguícero, whose comments contributed to the improvement of the manuscript originally submitted.