2014 Report of the Animal Demography Unit's Virtual Museum

Virtual Museum Report 2014

Les Underhill and Megan Loftie-Eaton – Animal Demography Unit University of Cape Town

Knowing the ranges of species and how they are changing is

key to proper biodiversity conservation and can act as an

early warning system if a species might be in trouble.

Is a species' range expanding or contracting? If we don't

know this how can we make proper decisions regarding

its conservation?

During 2014 we added 56787 records to the Virtual

Museum database. The total for 2013 was 32249. That is a

76% increase!

During 2014 we quietly passed the one million records milestone. The

total number of records in the Virtual Museum database has grown to

1 029 368 records!! This includes non-photographic records, bulk uploads,

and museum specimens, for butterflies, frogs, reptiles and

mammals.

LepiMAP was the big achiever with 21502 records

for 2014. Well done LepiMAPpers!

Three new projects joined the Virtual Museum family this year: MushroomMAP,

LacewingMAP, and OrchidMAP

The big publishing event of 2014 was the Atlas and Red List of the Reptiles of South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. This book

was the culmination of the Southern African Reptile Conservation Assessment (SABCA)

which has now become ReptileMAP

The Red Listing of Mammals is underway! Please make a special

effort to submit your mammal records to MammalMAP

The instructions for submitting records to the Virtual Museum are available at

http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-submit-records-to-the-animal-demography-units-virtual-museums-28710898