OdonataCentral.com: A Model for the Web-based Delivery of Natural History Information and Citizen Science J. C. Abbott, D. Broglie he World Wide Web can be as cluttered web technology to digitally deliver natural history and confusing as the house of that ec- information. Tcentric aunt you never wanted to visit. Knickknacks from Tampa were strewn across the History kitchen floor, assorted Hummels were stocked in November 2004 saw the quiet launch of Odo- the medicine cabinet, and piles of old National nataCentral (http://www.odonatacentral.com) (Fig. Geographic magazines teetered precariously to 1), a web site sponsored by the Texas Memorial the ceiling. Navigating the house was difficult and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin that perilous. Nothing was ever in its correct place, relies on the novel incorporation of existing World but then again, there never was a correct place for Wide Web, database, and geographic information anything either. system (GIS) technologies to produce a dynamic, For biologists, trying to find accurate, up-to- interactive field guide and web site for the dragon- date natural history and distribution information flies and damselflies of North America. is an equally frustrating venture. When one does The traditional approach to online field guides find a legitimate field guide, it will probably con- relies heavily on static (not database-generated) sist of outdated, kludgy, or static species lists and checklists, species descriptions, and distribution distribution maps. The prevalence of such sites maps. Thus, whenever an author needs to update seems counterintuitive to our modern mantra that one county record, many or all of the regional and computer advances are supposed to automate and global pages must be edited manually. The time and simplify, not complicate, our lives. We propose a effort required to update a single record usually re- way to embrace this mantra and apply biology and sult in frustration and the eventual shelving of such projects. In the world of hardcopy publications, different problems exist. There is often a long delay between the reporting of new records by observers and the publishing of those records. OdonataCentral circumvents these limitations by using databases and code to produce web content. For users sitting in the warm glow of a computer screen, the dynamically generated results are indistinguishable from the static. At the heart of OdonataCentral lies the North American Dot Map Project. Started in 1994, the project involved the efforts of more than 100 contributors from the Odonata community to accurately document and amalgamate the distri- butions of all North American odonate species through 2004. A three-volume set of the data was published by Donnelly (2004a, b, c). After the dust had settled and odonatologists started digesting the maps and data, we realized the value of such a massive wealth of vetted digital data. The original OdonataCentral, a field guide to the odonates of the south-central United States, was integrated with Fig. 1. Home page of OdonataCentral. the Dot Map Project data and relaunched. 240 American Entomologist • Winter 2005 The Site OdonataCentral uses Active Server Pages (ASP), JavaScript, Microsoft Access databases, and Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI’s) mapping software to produce web content. Records are stored, retrieved, and displayed from a relational database that houses all data tables. The use of a relational data structure devoted to spe- cies, observations, seasonality, photographs, and other fields means that any additions, deletions, or other modifications need only to be updated within the database once. Database modifications are immediately reflected when a user visits the site or refreshes a page. These updates remove the hassle of many individual page edits. Users can generate species checklists at any geo-political level—from something as grand as all of North America to something as specific as Travis County, TX. The lists can then be printed, downloaded as comma-separated files, or used to generate statistics such as the number of family, genera, and species in a given area. With information on species size, distributions, flight seasons, biotic provinces, watersheds, impor- tant morphological characteristics, similar species, habitats, and bibliographic references, the field guide (Fig. 2) contains an unmatched wealth of species information. A south-central United States species distribution map, the ability to perform Google scholar (http://scholar.google.com) and Google image (http://www.google.com) searches, photos, and the option to produce a printer-friendly version of the page are all contained in the same page. Form-based searches (users enter and then submit key words into a form) and tree-based searches (users browse a graphical tree of taxa) are available for the field guide. From the field guide or menu bar, users may enter the web site’s robust odonate photo galleries. Driven by the same search mechanisms as the field guide, users may either browse a species tree or search for specific species. Locality, photographer, and image details such as shutter speed and f-stop are provided for most pictures. A bibliographic search engine, directory of odonatologists, searchable links database, refer- ence lookup form, and reversible common name Fig. 2. Field guide entry for the American Rubyspot (Hetaerina americana) to scientific name translator are combined under showing images, distribution map, seasonality, and descriptions. the menu bar’s “Utilities” heading. OdonataCentral allows and solicits community involvement. Anyone can submit new species locality records to the site. Digital photos can be uploaded to The Odonata Distribution Viewer the site and linked to the user’s record entry. How- The Odonata Distribution Viewer (Fig. 4) ever, if unavailable, voucher specimens are given an comprises another major facet of OdonataCentral. OdonataCentral reference number upon submission Using ESRI’s ArcIMS software, the distribution and can be mailed for identification to the University viewer serves as a powerful tool to visualize the of Texas or other suitable depositories. New records geographic distribution of dragonflies and dam- are vetted by regional experts and incorporated into selflies across North America. Users can zoom the site based on the expert’s determination. The (Fig. 5), pan, and query the distribution of any originator of the record is then recognized in perpetu- North American odonate species to view species ity for the information (Fig. 3). This turns out to be limits geographically, find gaps in county records a driving force for many contributors. The ability to for selected species, or generate accurate county add to the odonate knowledge base is appealing to checklists. Queries produce tables that link back many, as is the ability to view their contributions. to the main OdonataCentral field guide, providing American Entomologist • Volume 51, Number 4 241 roads, and elevation layers were finally added to the Odonate distribution data. The Future OdonataCentral is evolving quickly. Software and hardware upgrades are on the horizon, allow- ing for quicker database queries and map produc- tion. In addition, a bibliographic search, the ability to download PDF publications, an expanded photo gallery, and taxonomic catalog are currently in progress. We would like to develop an interface that will allow users to query the collections of major museums—much like the successful HerpNet (www.herpnet.org) and FishNet (http://speciesana- lyst.net/fishnet/) programs. We believe the uniqueness of OdonataCentral stems not only from its use of technology, but also from its promotion of community involvement— something often callsed “Citizen Science.” Because of the overwhelming response the site has received, we hope to create customized user profiles. Indi- viduals will be able to log on to OdonataCentral and track records they have submitted, keep up Fig. 3. User-submitted record representing a new find for Travis Co., Texas. with archives from listerservs, view relevant meet- ing dates of interest, and follow recently published literature based on specific criteria. seamless interoperability between checklists, field Dragonflies and damselflies are experiencing a guides, and distribution maps. By assigning the tremendous surge in interest. This is evident by the center of each county in the United States a latitude recent creation of festivals, such as Dragonfly Days and longitude and loading this data into the viewer in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (www.valleynatu- along with Odonate county record information recenter.org/dragonflydays/2006/) and the Roswell from the Dot Map Project and user submissions, Dragonfly Festival in New Mexico (www.fws. species ranges can be inferred. Canada and Mexico gov/southwest/refuges/newmex/bitterlake/friends. were divided into 30-minute grids that serve the html) that are drawing so many to attend. same purpose as U.S. county divisions. To complete In 2000, there were fewer than a handful of field the viewer, political boundaries, waterways, cities, guides to dragonflies and damselflies, and only one was widely available. At the time we wrote this article, there were more than 20 books popular- izing Odonata in North America, and many more are in the works. As these field guides become available for nearly every part of the country, our knowledge of distri- butions, behavior, and ecology is rapidly increas- ing. What is unusual about odonates as compared with many other insect