IMIS

The invasive ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi (Agassiz, 1865) was first found in the Black Sea in early 1980-s. This species created the tremendous ecosystem damage and big economic losses in the region in the late 1980-s, 1990-s. It was recognized as one of the main ecological problems for the Black Sea ecosystem. A number of the Black Sea researchers studied the Mnemiopsis and analyzed its distribution and temporal and space variability within the sea. However, these analyses are based on data collected by the researchers themselves and in some cases on the basis of the several datasets collected by a group of researches. Unfortunately, none basin wide long term database of the Black Sea Mnemiopsis was created in contrast to the physical and chemical variables for which several comprehensive databases were created and made available for scientists. They are, for example, MEDAR/MEDATLAS project database (http://www.ifremer.fr/medar/) available on the CD-ROM, and the NATO SfP Black Sea ODBMS project database supported by the IMS-METU and available at http://sfp1.ims.metu.edu.tr/ODBMSDB/. It is not a case for biological data. For Mnemiopsis, for example, only several datasets can be found within the NATO SfP Black Sea ODBMS project database that do not give a possibility to analyze in details the special distribution and long term variability of this important species. To fill this gap the MLDB was created by IBSS (Ukraine) with help of IMS METU (Turkey) in the frameworks of the BS SCENE EC project and supported further by the Black Sea Commission. The MLDB gives a possibility to analyze in details the special distribution and the time variability of the Mnemiopsis at different time scales from time of its invasion into the Black Sea till nowadays. The list of the MLDB data providers can be accessed any time from the database itself: http://bss.ibss.org.ua/dataporviders.aspx. Access to the data loaded into the database is being provided through the license agreement. Information on this agreement can be found in the "Terms of use" MLDB menu item. Access to the loaded metadata is fully unrestricted. The full description of the Mnemiopsis leidyi database can be found in a paper published in the journal Aquatic Invasions (2011) Volume 6, Issue 1. Any questions related to the database and loaded data can be addressed to the database administrator (Volodymyr Myroschychenko). Please contact him as well if you would like your data or metadata to be loaded into the database.