Updating Data Map Page

Too much fine detail

Maps of counties would have tiny dots in a big sea for almost all pages, and would even more than today reflect where photographers are rather than where bugs are.

I would rather selectively add ecozones for states with an interesting diversity:

South Florida (neotropical)
South Texas (almost neotropical, and distinct)
West Texas (Great Plains and desert vs. Eastern deciduous)
Southern California
Southern Appalachians (northern fauna)
Northern Ontario (boreal, not temperate)

… John F. Carr, 6 January, 2012 - 11:40am

California's more complicated

The main distinction isn't northern vs. southern California, but mediterranean-type lowlands, desert/Great Basin, and the mountains separating them. This follows the mountain ranges from the Mexican border up to at least the San Francisco Bay area.

The problem is that there's no way to consistently tell which is which from data fields we already have. Counties here tend to be very large, and many have large areas of all 3 regions. Here in Los Angeles County, Long Beach has a lot in common with coastal Mexico (and Alameda County up north, for that matter), Wrightwood would look at home in the Rockies, and Lancaster isn't that much different from Las Vegas.

… Chuck Entz, 6 January, 2012 - 10:24pm

Mike Boone is certainly interested in this.

And including the Districts in the Provinces of Canada where applicable. The other thing we need to do is have BugGuide 2.0 have a dropdown menu of counties for each state, so people enter the correct info there. We have gone through and fixed six or seven hundred submissions that Mike found that didn't have state data. Next, we think, he might try to do something with those that don't have county data, but he's plenty busy, so we don't know when he might get to it.

One thing you can currently do is make a google map through Advanced Search. Select a taxon and start to type it into the Taxon ID # field and BugGuide will identify the taxon number. Do an Advanced Search and scroll down to the bottom to make a Google map. It places all the records in their location on a google map, if they have county data.

We first need to separate eggs from larva from adults, etc in orders other than lepidoptera if you want to see time changes. Right now almost some form of an insect can be found anytime in anyplace, so unless you select adult only you won't get change over time. 2.0 should enable us to sort out all those different life stages.

… john and jane balaban, 3 January, 2012 - 5:03pm

Creating Time Lapse Animations?

Might be extremely useful in visualizing the movements of migratory species or spring emergence patterns when combined with date information to create time lapse animations? Compiling data is great but we should also work at producing compelling ways to convey and share that knowledge with laypersons in the public. People care about what they know and if we want people to care about bugs then we need to make learning about them entertaining and intuitive.

… Matt Bearup, 3 January, 2012 - 4:13pm