Virtual Museum 2014 – progress to Voting Day 7 May 2014
Les Underhill and Megan Loftie-Eaton
Animal Demography UnitUniversity of Cape Town
During 2013 we added 32249 records to the Virtual Museum. Up to 7 May, we have already added 20016
records in 2014, 60% of the whole of last year!!
The most spectacular progress has been made by LepiMAP. 7365 records have been added
already this year
LepiMAP is the Atlas of African
Lepidoptera. LepiMAP is a citizen
science project which aims to determine
the distribution and conservation priorities of
butterflies and moths on the entire African
continent
The total number of records in the Virtual Museum database has grown to 607427,
including non-photographic records, mainly museum specimens, for butterflies,
frogs and reptiles
The big publishing event of 2013 was the the “butterfly atlas” – the
big event of 2014 so far is the publication of the reptile atlas, the
culmination of the Southern African Reptile Conservation
Assessment (SABCA) which was launched in April
There are now more than 10000 records in PHOWN, which collects PHOtos of Weaver Nests for the 117 species of weaver in the world, of which 112 are
endemic to Africa and the other five to southern
Asia
OdonataMAP, for dragonflies and damselflies, needs 357 records to reach 10000. This project has generated new species for South Africa, and made a
massive contribution to range expansions
The first thing needed to do a conservation assessment of a species is an accurate and
current distribution map. Please help us build the 21st century distribution maps for
thousands of species
Unless we get your piece of the jigsaw
puzzle, the distribution maps for a species will
be incomplete
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