About me 

My name is Mgr. Michal Mikšík, I live in Prague in the Czech Republic and work in a molecular genetics laboratory. Since childhood, I have been fascinated by nature and especially fish, thanks to their enormous diversity and variety. This was largely due to the fact that as a young boy I read a history book called Ryby mořské a sladkovodní from 1909 (´= Marine and Freshwater Fishes), which contained beautiful pictures. Although I never felt the urge to study fish scientifically and become an ichthyologist (probably because I am very afraid of flying and poisonous snakes :)), this did not change my admiration for this group of animals. Like many others, I devoted myself to aquarium keeping and gradually (as with many others) became fascinated by the variability of catfish from the Loricariidae family (L-catfishes). Today, I keep about 50 species of catfish in my aquariums, which allows me to enjoy at least a little bit of this amazing biodiversity. However, I always wanted to be involved in something bigger, at least to some extent...

Experience with Catalog of fishes

When the Catalog of Fishes project was launched on the internet, I decided to contact W. Eschmeyer to ask if I could help him in any way, not expecting that anyone would listen to an enthusiast.

But the exact opposite happened. W. Eschmeyer enthusiastically accepted my help, and I began compiling literary sources for him, most of which were not online at the time, thus helping with the gradual completion of the database. I contacted institutions around the world, requesting copies of articles, first in paper form and then electronically, and eventually became a paid external contributor to the project.

Then many other people got involved in the project, and so the collaboration gradually ceased to make much sense, and most of the sources gradually became available electronically, but I am grateful that I was able to participate in it. William also gave me a copy of the book CLOFFSCA with his countless notes as a gift.

When he recently passed away, I looked back and saw how many hundreds of emails we had exchanged. He was truly an exceptional person....

Fishes of the World

My long-standing collaboration with W. Eschmeyer also led me to collaborate on the last two editions of Prof. Nelson's Fishes of the World, for which I also compiled the source material, in this case exclusively for the order Siluriformes, and helped him refine the texts based on recent studies so that they would be as up-to-date as possible at the time of publication.

Again, as an amateur and enthusiast, it was a real pleasure for me to be able to contribute at least a little to such an amazing book. And I would also like to thank J. Nelson for the beautiful dedication he wrote in the his book for me....:)

Science...

Although I am not a scientist in the field of ichthyology, I am in my second hobby, which is mycology, and I have described several new species of fungi with my colleagues. I have published many books in this field, and I dare say that my latest book, European Boletes, is an absolutely extraordinary work in this field, on which I also collaborated with leading experts in this field. See my web: www.fungipress.eu and reference:

https://fieldmycology.org/index.php/journal/article/view/308/298

I also have a small publishing house, where I publish special publications, and the next one will be a book about catfish... which I have dreamed of since my childhood.