Dear Marian Simpetru,
Thanks for your email. For background information on ITIS and on what
may be found therein please see:
http://www.itis.gov/itis_primer.html
http://www.itis.gov/glossary.html
The species in question is currently listed as Pangasius hypophthalmus
(Sauvage, 1878) (TSN 639954) in ITIS (originally described as
Helicophagus hypophthalmus Sauvage 1878), and if you go to the page you
will see the sources that were cited for it:
http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_
value=639954
The primary source ITIS cites is a 2005 version of Bill Eschmeyer's
"Catalog of Fishes" (which is what ITIS follows for virtually all fish
names), the current version of which is here:
http://research.calacademy.org/research/ichthyology/catalog/fishcatmain.
asp
Bill has since then followed a 2007 work that treats the species as
valid in a different combination, like so:
Pangasianodon hypophthalmus (Sauvage 1878). When ITIS next updates this
group it will reflect whatever the current treatment Bill gives for it.
Updates are generally made in taxonomic "chunks" of reasonable size (a
family, an order, etc.), and for fishes we update such groups
exhaustively.
FishBase is related in that they generally follow the Catalog of Fishes,
except where they choose to do otherwise. I do not know what their
update policies are, but as of a few years ago I understood that ITIS
and FishBase were very compatible in their handling of almost all fish
names, since they were largely based on the same source.
The ITIS and Species 2000 "Catalogue of Life" project (CoL) is a
confederation of separate databases (vs. a centralized database like
ITIS), and ITIS freely provides whatever data CoL would like to use. The
current model of CoL is to almost exclusively use single "Global Species
Databases" (GSDs) for whatever groups have them, and to use ITIS for
other groups. In the case of fishes, CoL uses FishBase's data. CoL
produces an Annual Catalogue in which new GSDs are added and existing
data for GSDs are updated from the source database where feasible (not
necessarily annually).
I hope this helps some. Thanks for your interest in ITIS!
Regards,
Dave
David Nicolson
Data Development Coordinator, Integrated Taxonomic Information System
Biologist, USGS/NBII
.....
http://www.itis.gov/
http://www.cbif.gc.ca/itis/
"Nihil sumas necesse est..."