LepiMAP News March 2014

LepiMAP – a review of the first three months of 2014

Website: http://lepimap.adu.org.za/

LepiMAP is a partnership between the Lepidopterists’

Society of Africa and the Animal Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town

LepiMAP 1

LepiMAP is generating the 21st century distribution maps of butterflies and

moths in Africa. These are fundamental for conservation, because if we do not know the distributions of species, and how they are changing we cannot do anything sensible to protect them. This newsletter reviews the progress we have made in the first three months of 2014. Number of records submitted to LepiMAP since the start of 2014: 4154 records! This is far more than last year when 2195 were submitted in the first three months. The LepiMAP Facebook group has grown from 475 members to 624! The LepiMAP Facebook page has grown from 328 fans to 539!

The LepSoc Twitter account has grown from 41 followers to 104!! The LepSoc Facebook page has grown to 928 fans! The LepSoc Facebook group has grown to 844 members! Since the start of 2014, 11 new observers have registered to contribute to LepiMAP through the Virtual Museum website (there is a total of 281 observers). We have also added four new members to the LepiMAP ID Panel for a total of 28 ID Panel members. We launched the Great Little White Butterfly Migration group on Facebook on 13 January 2014 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/WhiteButterflyMigration/). In the group we wrote: "This is an experiment in doing some real scientific research on Facebook." An amazing amount of data has come in through this group! And we will be processing and analysing this data in April. Currently, the Facebook group has 322 members.

LepiMAP mini-projects: Project Painted Lady

The Cabbage White Land-grab

On 2 February we reached a great milestone! 40000 records submitted

to LepiMAP through the Virtual Museum website! This number does not include bulk uploads, specimen records, historical records or records that arrived via email in the earlier years. A really great achievement!! If you have photographs of butterflies and moths, and have not yet submitted them to the LepiMAP Virtual Museum, please do so as soon as convenient. We need your records in the database so we can work out where the priority areas for fieldwork are.

We have received the full African butterfly species list as well as the moth species list for South Africa (thank you Andre and Bennie Coetzer and Hermann Staude). These lists are in the process of being added to the LepiMAP database. Rene Navarro is working hard on structuring the drop-down list in a way that will make it easy for the ID panel members to navigate.

This Flutterby Friday had a total reach of 4854 people (i.e. 4854 people saw this post)!! And got shared 68 times via the LepiMAP Facebook page! This record was submitted to LepiMAP by Altha Swiegers Liebenberg. Every Friday we feature a butterfly/moth from the LepiMAP database. Each week we also feature a LepiMAP “Record of the Week”, to thank all LepiMAPpers for their contributions.

Lots of useful Slideshares were made to help LepiMAPpers contribute to the Virtual Museum, but also to help them make use of the data in the Virtual Museum. Here are the links to all the slideshows:

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

How to photograph butterflies and moths: http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-photograph-butterflies-and-moths

How to create a species map in the Virtual Museum: http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-create-a-map

How to create a species list from the Virtual Museum projects: http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-create-a-species-list

Virtual Museum Report for 2013: http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/virtual-museum-report-2013

The Animal Demography Unit is now part of Africa Geographic’s blogging team. LepiMAP has featured twice in these blogs and here are the links:

http://blog.africageographic.com/africa-geographic-

blog/conservation/project-painted-lady/

http://blog.africageographic.com/africa-geographic-

blog/conservation/the-cabbage-white-butterfly-land-grab/

Total number of butterfly records identified in LepiMAP: Total Number of Records: 42,567 Total Butterfly Records: 35,562 Total Butterfly Records with ID's: 34,573 (96.97%)!! *moth ID’s to follow soon!! The moth list will be available in the near future so that moth records can also be ID-ed.

We encourage all LepiMAPpers to join the Lepidopterists Society of Africa (LepSoc). LepSoc is a great society and if you have a passion for butterflies and moths, or just want to learn more about these beautiful insects, then joining LepSoc is a must!! Here is a link to the LepSoc website: http://www.lepsoc.org.za/ --- you can find out everything you need to know about how to join LepSoc here.

Megan Loftie-Eaton