Plants and Animals Around the Caribbean coast of Panama

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has an online database of plants and animals appearing "in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, the Bahía Almirante, Laguna de Chiriquí, and the surrounding mainland on the Caribbean coast of Panama." Animals are by far the most numerous of the entities listed at http://striweb.si.edu/bocas_database/. The site is in Spanish and English.

You can do a quick keyword search or drill-down, starting with animals, fungi, plants, and algae and single-cell organisms, and then moving into phylum, division, or whatever's appropriate. I did a quick keyword search for red. I got 29 results.

Results are presented in a table which includes class, order, family, genus/species, and common name. An icon indicates when there's a photograph available. The genus/species is hyperlinked; clicking on it takes you to a page of information about the entity including a physical description, habitat, natural history, and distribution. There's also a bibliography of information, both paper- and Internet- based. I saw references to Fishbase, Entrez, and the Florida Museum of Natural History.

You can get more information about the database in the STRI press release, which also includes some useful external links.

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