About this map. Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and click a dot to identify the species. The 7,385 dots are real occurrence records pulled from GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility — an aggregator of museum specimens, scientific surveys and verified citizen-science sightings — queried for both each fish’s current name and its older genus combination (Siluriformes genera have been reshuffled a great deal, so many species are still indexed under a former genus such as Doras, Silurus, Mystus, Pimelodus or Ictalurus). Treat them as a guide to where a species lives, not exact spots: many records are georeferenced to a locality centroid (a nearby village or river mouth) rather than the precise catch site, some are historical or low-precision, and the occasional point may be a misidentification, an aquaculture record, or a feral occurrence well outside the native range — catfish are among the most-farmed and most-introduced fish, so we keep only points that fall inside the native-range boxes. Many small, recently-described stream catfish have no public records yet — an empty map is honest, not an error. No coordinates are invented.
← Browse the Catfish index