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Post by nomihoudai on Feb 27, 2022 2:17:26 GMT -8
I am very happy to announce that I was able to finish a little website I had been thinking about for years. For years I would have liked to have a website that focuses on distribution lists (in contrast to maps). Over the last days I was able to stitch it together: lepimap.click/The goal of LepiMap is to share butterfly distribution lists. This is the first version of the website. Currently, it has lists for all major countries. In the future I hope to refine the lists and make it possible to get lists for individual islands or states/provinces. Right now some of the lists are pretty incomplete, I will think about ways for users to help and work on the algorithm that makes the lists. Right now, the US and most tropical countries are only 20% complete, but for most European countries the lists are about 90% complete. While I'd like them to be complete, I am more than happy to have the bread and butter species listed first. Right now there is over 150 countries, 9000 species, and 35.000 records. Go check it out! I am happy about any feedback and hope that it is interesting to others too. It's great to read through the list of close countries and see how the fauna changes.
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Post by miguel on Feb 27, 2022 10:07:13 GMT -8
Hello,I had take a look in the spanish list and I have seen a few mistakes in this moment.
Iolana iolas doesn't fly in Spain,here is flying Iolana debilitata.
Elphinstonia charlonia flies in the Canary Islands,in Spanish mainland flies Euchloe bazae.
There are 2 Spialia sp.,Spialia rosae is a very new described specie.
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Post by miguel on Feb 27, 2022 10:10:35 GMT -8
Satyrium w-album,Satyrium pruni,Pyrgus cacaliae,Pyrgus andromedae algo fly in Spain too but they are a very rare species.
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Post by miguel on Feb 27, 2022 10:17:29 GMT -8
Finally I miss Pieris ergane and the Anthocharis that flies here is Anthocharis belia not euphenoides.
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Post by nomihoudai on Feb 27, 2022 12:59:41 GMT -8
Thank you for your feedback Miguel, there is some interesting cases you pulled out.
Right now if you click on Spain it will be a mixture between mainland Spain and Spanish territories. All the endemics from Canary islands are listed. I will try to fix that.
For the iolas vs. debilitata it does look like a taxonomic question. Given the large scale of the project there will be lots of debatable cases.
For Anthocharis belia and euphenoides it looks like a question of nomenclature/taxonomy. I manually checked some sources available to me and in English/German literature belia is for Northern Africa and euphenoides for Southern Europe. I also saw the original description of belia which does list "Barbaria" as type locality. This is known as North Africa. So pulling in that information I would end up with belia in Morocco and euphenoides in Spain. I got some great ideas to improve on my lists and pull in more information.
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Post by wollastoni on Feb 28, 2022 1:53:05 GMT -8
Congrats Claude for this impressive work ! Will be very useful for entomologists !
I had a quick look and have some few comments. In a scientific point of view, I would prefer a geographical segmentation than a political segmentation. For example, having all species of New Guinea island rather having some new Guinean species in PNG and some species in Indonesia (mixed with some species from very far islands). Food for thoughts.
I have checked only New Guinean Delias and see that many Delias species are missing. (maaikeae, laknekei, elusiva...). If you need a file with all Delias species and locality, I can send it to you.
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Post by jshuey on Feb 28, 2022 4:24:02 GMT -8
This is pretty interesting. Will users be able to access the underlying data?
John
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Post by nomihoudai on Feb 28, 2022 12:35:12 GMT -8
I am glad that people find it interesting. wollastoni>In a scientific point of view, I would prefer a geographical segmentation than a political segmentation. - Yes, I plan to have both ecological and political layers. For example I want to have separate lists for islands. This would unify Papua New Guinea. I already have over 50 lists for islands which are not online yet as I first must find or create files with the outlines of these islands. - I would be glad to have the file on Delias and would be happy to improve my lists with it. I sent you a ping from my current email. jshuey Thank you. When people need further information about a record they can always reach out to me and I should be able to trace back the source. It will not be feasible for users to directly access the source data through my website. There is multiple reasons for this which I want to explain. - Extracting data from my large datasets can take up to minutes. This is too long for people to wait.
- There is not a single source database. The data presented in the end is a consensus found through an ensemble vote rating the different sources. The lists are a result of both data and the computer programs I wrote to process the data (scripts, and machine learning).
- When people allow me to use their data to improve my website (like Olivier for example) it does not allow me to pass on that data in crude form.
Therefore, the final lists are the best I can come up with. Of course, I will later explain how I created the lists and which data sources I used. Little side story: Right now large parts of the data were seen on GBIF and I have already noticed some mistakes that I copied 1:1 into the website. But I am working on algorithms to identify and fix these issues. This morning I was tracking a clearly incorrect record from Iceland to understand what was going on. To my surprise I knew the American authors of the paper in person. The next surprise was the origin of the dataset in GBIF. It originated from a German research group that specialized in scanning entomological journal articles. This research group is located in the same building where I did my Ph.D.! I didn't know they were working on this until I found the incorrect record today. It's a small world.
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Post by africaone on Feb 28, 2022 13:22:26 GMT -8
amazing to see only 41 in Belgium and 85 in Luxembourg ....
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Post by jshuey on Mar 2, 2022 6:09:52 GMT -8
it's very interesting - and will be even more exciting as the data fills in.
John
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