A Georeferenced Dataset of All Fishes Collected from Freshwaters of Ghana in Museum Collections

Biological specimens collected and deposited in museum collections are a valuable resource for ecological and evolutionary research and species conservation, especially in species-rich but poorly documented tropical areas. The utility of these collected specimens for basic science and conservation is greatly enhanced by combined digital collections of all available specimens, including date of collection and georeferenced location data. In this paper, we introduce a publicly available, digitized, and georeferenced dataset of freshwater fishes of Ghana aggregated from eleven different research institutions and museums. The dataset contains 2696 total collection records representing 23,001 individuals, 224 species, and 38 families of freshwater fishes in Ghana. This dataset is characterized by extreme taxonomic, spatial, and temporal disparities in collection records. In spite of these disparities, analysis of the dataset can yield important immediate contributions to the conservation of freshwater fishes in Ghana. We suggest methods to efficiently augment these valuable data, and we anticipate that this dataset will be a valuable resource for scientific research and conservation efforts in Ghana and other parts of West Africa.