WMSD - Worldwide mollusc species DB Bagni Liggia

WMSDB application is just an attempt to create a complete list of all Species of Mollusc still living on our planet (fossil shells are not included).

Being a shell collector I'm aware this is a "quite impossible" task; in addition I'm not an expert on taxonomy. But I have some spare time and I'm able to write some computer programs to investigate the Web and to normalize the informations.

WMSDB application is built around a MySQL DataBase which is periodically refreshed. A subset of this DataBase is available for downloading.

I started this project 4 years ago because I was tired to waste time in trying to decode the shells offered by various vendors over the net.  The basic idea was to put all synonyms and omonyms inside a DB in such a way the system could tell me the "true shell" represented by each offer.

Things are changed over the time and then I decided to write a program able to automatically create HTM pages from the DB. Having been a GIS consultant in the past I also tried to georeference each shell.

The HTM pages you can find here are just the result of this task.

To save disk space on the server only thumbnails are available here, but, in most cases, I also have better images available. The "private" version of HTM pages shows also these images but the disk space is more than 300 GB: too big to make it available on the net. Also most images have a copyright and, even if the owner of the copyright is stored inside the DB, the task to ask permissions to each owner is too long.

The "public" version of HTM pages includes links to some vendors (or to other shell resources) from where I found good images.

I know there are thousands of errors inside the DB but I hope to have the time to make it better in the future: your help in doing that will be much appreciated.


Author: Claudio Galli - last updated: 07/07/2013