Virtual Museum Report 2014 – progress to Voting Day 7 May 2014

1. Virtual Museum 2014 – progress to
Voting Day 7 May 2014
Les Underhill and
Megan Loftie-Eaton
Animal Demography Unit
University of Cape Town

2. 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!!

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Unless we get your
piece of the jigsaw
puzzle, the distribution
maps for a species will
be incomplete

10. The instructions for submitting
records to the Virtual Museum
are available at
http://www.slideshare.net/mega
nloftieeaton/how-to-submit-
records-to-the-animal-
demography-units-virtual-
museums-28710898