Early naturalists’ accounts (1818-1936) on the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea) fish fauna

Early naturalists’ accounts are an important source of past information on marine species and communities. These documents, particularly abundant in the 19th century because of the ascendancy of the Linnaean system, provide the earlier available systematic description of species that can be used to set a historical baseline of marine biodiversity in the Adriatic Sea. The dataset includes information on fish species reported in 29 books written by 24 naturalists published between 1818 and 1936. Books were written in Italian, German or English, and translated into English. Information on invertebrates and mammals was not available in most books and thus it was not included in the dataset. Naturalists’ knowledge of fish fauna was primarily based on direct observations at fish markets and at ports, on interviews with fishermen, on literature and on the analysis of natural history museum collections. 255 fish species are described in terms of presence/absence, perceived-abundance, habitat, distribution, seasonality, reproduction, fishery, maximum length and maximum weight (4,027 records). In some documents, maximum length was expressed in Roman uncia (inch) or pes (foot), while maximum weight in Roman pound libra or ounce. The lengths were transformed in cm and approximated to the half millimetre according to the following: 1 Roman inch = 2.47 cm, 1 Roman foot = 29.65 cm. Weight was transformed in kg according to the following: 1 pound = 0.33 kg and 1 ounce = 0.027 kg. In the original documents, species were cited with their old scientific names (reported in the dataset under the field “SYNONYM”) that were updated according to the modern nomenclature referring to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). The local vernacular name of each species is also reported in the dataset (under the field “VERNACULAR_ITALIAN_NAME”) as mentioned by the authors. For each book, the place where the author based his work is cited, when available (under the field “PLACE”).