How important is it to have GPS data?

[lucanidae25]

Personially I don't like GPS data because with beetles I never find the same beetles at the same location every year. They are in the general area but conditions change every year, ie rain, temperatures etc. That will change the location every year. I think having a better knowledge on vegetations and knowing which plants to look is much more important. Most sp are found on one or two kind of plants in that general area, rather than in one location.

Plus, I can never just looking by the GPS data and remember where is it I collected that specimen. One of my friend would made me to put GPS data on all our specimens, I used to hate it so much. The data ends up beening so long, ie location, date, GPS, elevations, weather, vegetations...... etc. We're not friends any more because I didn't wana do it. I think just a general area and date is enough for a collecting data.

I still don't understand the important to have the collecting data to the exact date. Conditions change every year, no two years are the same. Different sp would comes out in different year. I think having the month and year would be good enough. I don't think going to the same location and the same date would guarantee to find the same sp.

For family like Orthoptera, Blattaria, Mantodea and Phasmida, they are all year round. Dose it really matter about which date you catch it?

[timoinsects]

yes it is of great importance. with data,you can collect them again in the correct place with correct time. but actually most data are useless for most collectors, your specimen came from all over the world by exchange or buy, is it possible that to use thouse data to go to their countries to collect again? mostly or almost not. but for domestic insects are importance and necessary.

[lucanidae25]

My point is beetles move around a lot. If you find one sp of beetle at one location one year, dosen't mean you'll find the same sp next year at the same location. There's no guarantee. Trust me I've done in the past, go back to the same spot at the same date the following year but conditions changed that year. It was too dry, not had any rain that year at all, so no beetles that year. Chances have a lot to do with collecting beetles. Conditions have to be perfact for the beetles to come out.

[pennswoods]

IMO exact GPS data is usually irrelevant to "normal" insect collecting... i.e. personal or hobby / serious amateur. For museum research collection, it adds another data point. Most insect collectors are, by nature, detail oriented and anal-retentive about exactly what they want. A geographic name location, and anything else important such as elevation if you are in a mountainous region is nice. Date is just a standard data entry on a tag. I include GPS derived lat-long on some tags, and some I don't. Even then, I take a GPS fix only in the general area I'm collecting. So even if someone 100 years from now plots the location I listed, there is no way to know if that is EXACTLY where I got it, or 150 meters away across the field, plus or minus the error inherent in the fix. Entomologists ( and EVERYONE ELSE) got along just fine for centuries before GPS.

[lucanidae25]

With beetles I think having rain at just the right time is much important from my experience. Rain seems to be the common tracker for beetle emerges but data dosen't mention anything about rain at all.

The only reason I don't like GPS data is because my friend made me to write a new reading every few meters. I ended up spending more time writing data than doing collecting.

[bobw]

The more detailed the data provided, the better. Many people will just put the name of the nearest town or village, when the actual locality could easily be 50 km or more in any direction from that town, where habitats could be very different. At least with GPS co-ordinates you should know you're in the exact spot where a specimen was caught so at least the habitat should be right. In mountains the exact altitude is also very important as some species have very restricted altitudinal limits.

Other things such as weather, vegetation, time of day etc. are also useful, although most people don't bother with this as there's only so much information you have time to record in the field and space is limited on data labels. Dates are very useful as they make it easy to track the flight period over the years, and to monitor seasonal variation.

Bob

[lucanidae25]

I don't like spending all my time writing up collecting data when I'm in the fields. I like to do collecting not writing, I don't think that's too hard to understand? Or is it?

Beetles fly more than just one day that recorded in the data, they normally fly more or less than 2 weeks. Some more some less. I normally prefer to put a period from such date to such date.

Dose it really matter about which date you catch Orthoptera, Blattaria, Mantodea and Phasmida? They are all year round. Vegetations might be more important as for data?

[africaone]

one must be serious one second !

if you want to do scientific collecting, there nothing better than GPS datas ! to go back capture the sp, to make distribution maps, etc....
precison of a localisation is another question. If you put you camp on one site and you hunt around, of course it seems difficult to put excat GPS datas on each specimen and GPS datas of your camp is better than nothing.

weather, season, temperature and age of the captain are different parameters that all have their own importance !

It is at the appreciation of each to write what they want on the label.

If you have nothing to do with this, none is forced to do it !

[jshuey]

Why collect GPS data for collecting sites?


How about one of these sites (a just a few km apart) commonly has this bug - and the other never has it? Does that change your mind??

Brasil, Parana
20km NNW of Garuva
25 53' 06"S, 48 57' 46"W
montane grassland
22 April 2011, elev. 1300m
J.A.Shuey/P.Labus, collectors


Brasil, Parana
20km NNW of Garuva
25 54' 18"S, 49 00' 49"W
montane grassland
18 April 2011, elev. 1300m
J.A.Shuey/P.Labus, collectors


I have no idea what the species is - but it is rare enough that people regularly hike up to the top of the second site to cature it...

Attachments:

[nomihoudai]

jshuey, You made a valid point there and nailed down the essence of the topic better than anybody could.

pennswoods:

Entomologists ( and EVERYONE ELSE) got along just fine for centuries before GPS.

Humans have survived for millions of years without modern medecine, I think I will better never go to the doctors again, I bet it will do good for me using your argument there.
... I bet Linnaeus would have given anything to get a GPS device back in his times. One time I read an article of 1908 by Aurivillius and even he added latitude longitude data to the location. How is it possible that he could do that and nowadays there still is people arguing against it ?

lucanidae25, taking the latitude longitude information every few meters is bulls*hit of course. If I take a point with GPS I usually wander around 100-200 meters, then I take the car or my feet and proceed a few kilometers further and then take a data point again. Also you always need to add the name of a local village so you can remember the place without a map etc.

Also knowledge of plants and ecology of the species you hunt is important to know, only the GPS point of capture will never guarantee a catch.

Date is important too, you might find differences in raintime season or dry season forms for example, etc. It also helps to refind location data if it got lost.

Furthermore, not everybody lifes/collects in tropics. Here in Europe/ North America where most users are from moths are very seasonal and the date will narrow down the search for possible species tremendously. The identification will be a lot easier then.

[pennswoods]

Sept 27, 2011 9:31:51 GMT -8 nomihoudai said:

Humans have survived for millions of years without modern medecine, I think I will better never go to the doctors again, I bet it will do good for me using your argument there.

wow, tremendous misinterpretation.

One good chinese EMP burst in space, and the Government will once again turn on Selective Availability for what's left of the GPS satellites. Humanity is becoming so reliant on GPS that it's scary. Really scary. A reasonably big solar flare could knock out most of the constellation.

Please remember the civilian usability of GPS is strictly a fringe benefit of a Defense program paid for by US taxpayers. Bill Clinton was convinced to set Selective Availability to zero, providing everyone the ability to get as good a fix as everyone else, if their receiving equipment was good enough. A few clicks of a mouse and all that can go to sh*t, your precise GPS coordinates might not put you back within a mile of where you thought you were. I've seen it done. There are other less known and less usable Global Navigation Satellite Systems, but the non-US ones are either not fully operational or still in planning. With Europe's money situation, good luck with Galileo.

My first career was heavily based on maintaining electronic transmission equipment for position finding and precise timing, and while I think GPS is great it is far from a panacea.

For my collecting data, I include it as a "base camp" reference, and it is good to find altitude within a reasonable few meters. Taking readings every few meters is insane, especially with handheld consumer-grade receivers.

In wilderness areas, it is probably more valuable than in non-wilderness areas. Locality data such as "Westside Road, 9 Km E of High Rolls, Otero County, NM" is more valuable than a string of numbers. If you're ass-deep a thousand Km up an un-named Amazon tributary, Lat-Long data is all you're gonna get, so then you use it.

GPS is great, but don't think it is like gravity- always there and always the same. It can go away in a heartbeat.

[lucanidae25]

jshuey

The Lucanidae in your pic is Macrocrates australis and it's a hill top sp, so all you have to do is go to the general area and find a hill top. You will find them sitting on vegetation on the very top of the Mt during the day. I still can't see the differences between: 25 53' 06"S, 48 57' 46"W and 25 54' 18"S, 49 00' 49"W. They are all just numbers to me.

I think you will find them sitting on a sp of plant that the females perfer to sit on and the male is just looking for female on the same plant. It's the vegetation that they prefer, not the latitude or longitude. It's local knowlage which is more important in the field. That's all to do with personal experience in the family you are interested.

And I'm interested to buy a GPS, they will alway be just numbers to me. GPS dosen't work in thick rainforest. I can give some one all the informations but it's still up to the skill of the collector to find the sp. If you don't have the skill, information is still useless.

[Chris Grinter]

This is a bit of a discouraging conversation about data - I think adding GPS to our labels provides the highest degree of locality information our modern technology allows. We have a responsibility to provide this data because these are natural history specimens, not stamps or bottle caps.

Comments above are correct, insects are highly mobile and putting a GPS point every few meters is ridiculous. But having a point for the general area you are in - or the trap you placed, or specific mountain top you are on - provides a redundant source of locality information that is fixed to a point on the globe, not a map. Town names change, boarders move, countries are re-named. Having a GPS point will help ensure that the area you describe on your label will be the same area for all time. What if that town you referenced was washed out by a flood and moved 3 miles down the road? Then your "3 miles West of..." is totally worthless.

Even if our GPS system goes offline or we switch to a new and better system we will always be able to reference these data regardless of what technology is being used! Install Google Earth (free) or just google the numbers online - is that too hard for you? Also modern GPS receivers will work in the rainforest and under heavy cloud cover.

No one is advocating using ONLY GPS points or suggesting that our common sense shouldn't be used when looking for a species again. Everyone one of us knows that every year is different, weather patterns vary, species move ranges and change abundance. Of course having a GPS point won't guarantee success - but at least you know more information than what could be conveyed by 4 lines of label descriptions. You should take notes on as much of this information as possible and keep it in your field notebook (but don't add 3 labels worth of weather and faunal composition notes to a pin - all of this can be looked up from historical records or found on maps).

The example of "Westside Road, 9 Km E of High Rolls, Otero County, NM" - this is NOT more helpful than a GPS point and date. What happens if westside road changes name? What happens if High Rolls burns down and is moved higher or lower? This might happen tomorrow and for a few generations everyone will know about this - but then it becomes lost to the history books. But having GPS gives you a reference point that is fixed - and a 5 second google will give you the exact information you are looking for.

I've dealt with lots of data from the turn of the century - Washington Territory, Ghost towns in Nevada, gold mining camps - it's really, really difficult to go into the history books and figure out the name of the camp that was used for 20 years by miners and what it was called before and after. Imagine if they had GPS, problem solved.

[lucanidae25]

My camera wouldn't even work under the humidity in the Asian rainforest. There's alway a possibility technology and rain/humidity just dosen't work together. What do you do when you GPS has stoped working in the fields, then what do you do?

[Chris Grinter]

Sept 27, 2011 16:45:10 GMT -8 lucanidae25 said:

My camera wouldn't even work under the humidity in the Asian rainforest. There's alway a possibility technology and rain/humidity just dosen't work together. What do you do when you GPS has stoped working in the fields, then what do you do?

You geo-reference your locality on google earth or a topo map, which is incredibly accurate. I can find the nook in the road I was standing on in Ecuador and get my points from there.

Time to upgrade your tech if you're having problems. My Canon camera works well in high humidity and my GPS is waterproof.