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One of our goals has been to make the Michigan Odonata Survey
database available over the Internet. No
w
that we are over 23,000 records, the data should be quite useful
to natural heritage agencies and other Odonatists, as well as
MOS participants. Since the MOS Database is kept in FileMaker
Pro 5.0, it only made sense to use Filemaker's built-in web server
features to the data accessible via the web.
The web version differs from our master databse
and data-entry templates in several ways. First, I only included
the fields for family, genus, species, county, locality, date,
collector, and MOS number. My reason for this is that the web
users need only that much information. The MOS number provides
a way to ask for more data for a specific specimen if necessary.
In another iteration of the web database, I'll include whether
the specimen is an adult, larva or exuviae. For now, the web database
allows searching and viewing the data in a table or form format.
When I learn how to do some fancier HTML coding, I'll make the
web database look and act a lot more like the actual Filemaker
database views that we use.
I have also put up the Larval Odonata database, which is based upon the specimens in our fluid collection, and has about 3800 records as of January 2003. That database originally started in 1996 as a means of curating our exuviae from the Kennedy and Williamson collections, and evolved into a database of all our Odonata specimens in alcohol. Most of the records databased thus far are from the Great Lakes region. This database is also in Filemaker Pro, and each vial is assigned a number by the database as a record is entered. I estimate that our current catalog is about one-third of the total number of vials of Odonata that we have, with much of the remaining material coming from the SW and NW USA, some southeastern states, Mexico, Central America, and some from Africa. A lot of those specimens were collected by UMMZ Fish Division expeditions, and undoubtedly represent a lot of new locality records for many species. This database also contains a subset of the fields in the working database, and is available at the same URL as the MOS database.
Either one of these projects could not have succeeded without financial support from the UMMZ Insect Division's Ammermann fund, generosity of donors, volunteer efforts of MOS participants, and U.S. Forest Service Grant 23-98-21-RJVA.
If the data is used in any studies or publications, please acknowledge the proper source of the MOS data as: Data provided by the Michigan Odonata Survey at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
| If you do use the data from either database, please let me know |
last updated 02/23/2005 by Mark O'Brien