Cover letter
From: John Pickering <pick@discoverlife.org>
To: Annie Simpson <asimpson@usgs.gov>
February 03, 2002
Annie Simpson
Biological Resources Division
USGS
Annie,
Here is our proposal to develop Web-based identification guides. If it
meets your approval, please relay it to Gladys. If not, send me your
recommendations, and I'll see what we can do. I'll be in Boston 5-12 Feb.
You can reach me there via Kevin Weick at 617-484-6428.
The proposal totals $24,900, as per your recent request. Earlier we
envisioned a larger budget that included guides for common ferns, grasses,
trees, and vertebrates. Hopefully, we can tackle these and additional
groups in the not too distant future.
Cheers,
Pick
________________________________________________________ |
John Pickering | Office: 706-542-1115 |
711 Biological Sciences Building | FAX: 706-542-3344 |
University of Georgia | Lab.: 706-542-1388 |
Athens, GA 30602-2602 | Department: 706-542-3379 |
e-mail: pick@discoverlife.org | Home: 706-353-7076 |
URL: <http://www.discoverlife.org/who/Pickering,_John.html> |
________________________________________________________ |
Proposal
Title: "Web-based identification guides for common North American
butterflies, moths, caterpillars, wildflowers, and invasive species."
John Pickering, University of Georgia
Brian Scholtens, College of Charleston
Robb Turner, SAMAB
David Wagner, University of Connecticut
Kay Yatskievych, Missouri Botanical Garden
Summary: We propose to build guides to empower Web users to identify over
1,400 North American species, using Polistes Corporation's 20q software
(see <http://www.discoverlife.org/nh/id>). The guides will be useful to
schools, citizen scientists, land managers, and scientists alike. They will
provide a powerful tool for teachers, students and other non-experts to
identify species and contribute to our knowledge of pollination and
herbivory (see Nature Days <http://www.discoverlife.org/pa/ev>).
We propose to do the following:
-
Add at least 600 North American common species to a wildflower
guide. Kay Yatskievych at Missouri Botanical Garden will coordinate all
plant work. Students in Georgia will provide technical support to Mobot in
image processing, scoring characters, and populating Web pages. We propose
to create a gateway Web page for each species that will include at least
one high-quality photograph of the species and links to the Missouri
Botanical Garden's Tropicos database
<http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html>,
<http://www.discoverlife.org>, and other sites with textual information,
distribution maps, and additional images for the species.
-
Add at least 600 butterfly and moth species from North America and
Mexico. Our goal is to focus on the common butterflies and larger moths
from the United States, Canada, and Northern Mexico. Brian Scholtens will
provide taxonomic expertise and oversight. Georgia students will take
high-resolution digital photographs of both the upper- and undersides of
the morphs of target species in the University of Georgia' s Natural
History Museum. They will provide technical support, process images, and
put information on the Web. For each species, we will build a Web gateway
with at least two diagnostic high-quality images and links to information
on appropriate Websites, such as Butterflies of North America, USGS
Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center's Website,
<http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/distr/lepid/bflyusa/bflyusa.htm>. We
will focus on Nymphalidae, Papilionidae, Pieridae, Saturnidae, Sphingidae
and charismatic species in other groups that non-experts most likely will
find and wish to identify.
-
Add 150 species to a guide to North American caterpillars. Dave
Wagner at the University of Connecticut will coordinate this work, select
species, provide photographs, and advise Georgia students in scoring
characters. Georgia students will process images and build gateway Web
pages that will contain at least one photograph per species and links to
USGS and other sites as described above. Even though there are over 14,000
Lepidoptera species in the United States, by selecting the 150 species most
commonly encountered by school children in eastern North America, we
estimate that we will enable them to successfully identify over 80% of the
specimens that they find. For polymorphic species and ones that differ
significantly between instars, we intend to include several photographs.
-
As a showcase of how to identify exotic invasive species from
native ones, we propose to add at least 50 invasive species and their
look-alike relatives to the guides. These will include the gypsy moth and
most of the invasive and native honeysuckles in the genus Lonicera. We will
put invasive species into the guides described above guides and also into a
guide that we will create specifically for invasive species. Again, we will
link each invasive species in the guides to existing Web pages on each
species. In the addition to the 50 invasive species that we will add of our
choosing, we will provide technical support to USGS-BRD personnel and your
collaborators so that you can send us photographs and characters and
include 300 species of your choosing into the on-line guide(s).
-
We propose to develop a technical support center for taxonomists,
photographers, illustrators, and others volunteering help with IDnature
guides. The center's equipment and expertise will allow volunteers to
contribute toward our goal of eventually providing Web users with guides to
all species. In 2002, we anticipate that volunteers will complete a guide
to North American salamanders, for example. Most notably, we must replace a
digital camera that is on loan to us. Goto
here
to see a medium resolution image from this camera. Then click on the image to see
its maximum resolution. We also must add storage capacity to our servers to
enable to serve the images.
-
We propose to develop Easy Names for all the species that we add to
the guides. Easy Names are standard identifiers that are easily remembered,
are unique for each morph that they name, are permanent, and can be used
over the Web to retrieve the most current scientific name. In addition to
making standard names easier for non-experts, they provide permanent
pointers by which information about organisms can be linked across Web
databases. For example, Brian Scholtens will start to add Easy Names to the
authority list of 14,000 North American butterflies and moths that he is
building. Kay Yatskievych will do the same for the plants. Eventually we
hope that Easy Names will be widely adopted, being added to the ITIS
database, for example. The Easy Names entries will link to scientific names
in the ITIS database.
-
At no charge to users, we will serve the proposed guides and images
through existing servers into the foreseeable future. If at some point we
are unable to continue this service, we will transfer the guides to a
non-profit or government organization. The proposers individually retain
exclusive copyright, with all rights reserved, to their photographs.
Polistes Corporation does the same for the 20q software that serves the
guides.
Budget: |
$6,500 | Digital Camera: Nikon D1X, lenses, flash, AC-power supply, cables |
$2,500 | Storage Disks: with SCCI interface for existing Unix server and mirror |
$2,500 | Computer: Macintosh G4 and software |
$7,655 | Support for UGA undergraduate student technicians ($7.50/hour) |
$2,000 | Support of Kay Yatskievych, Missouri Botanical Garden |
$1,500 | Support of Dave Wagner, University of Connecticut |
$1,000 | Support of Brian Scholtens, College of Charleston |
$1,245 | 5% indirect costs for The Polistes Foundation, to manage the grant |
|
Schedule: |
1 year from transfer of funds from USGS-BRD to The Polistes Foundation. |
|