Data Records
The data in this checklist resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 1,959 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
- Taxon (core)
- VernacularName
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Downloads
Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is Vermont Center for Ecostudies. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: afff5f4d-742e-4db0-b750-6766306f3a0a. Vermont Center for Ecostudies publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by U.S. Geological Survey.
Keywords
Checklist; Derivedfromoccurrence
Contacts
Who created the resource:
Who can answer questions about the resource:
Who filled in the metadata:
Geographic Coverage
eButterfly surveys are world wide
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
|---|
Taxonomic Coverage
taxonomic authority: Warren, A. D., K. J. Davis, N. V. Grishin, J. P. Pelham, E. M. Stangeland. 2012. Interactive Listing of American Butterflies. http://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/
| Superfamily | Papilionoidea (Butterflies) |
|---|
Project Data
eButterfly is a platform to survey butterflies world wide
| Title | eButterfly |
|---|---|
| Identifier | eButterfly |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
An observer(s) are asked to checklist survey butterflies. They visit a site and find and count as many butterflies as possible. Effort is tracked by the distance walked or area searched. Amount of time searching is recorded. Incidental observations - observing butterflies was not their primary purpose or they lack information about how many other butterfly species are in the area during the observation period (e.g.butterflying while driving or gardening- are also accepted.
| Study Extent | eButterfly users conduct butterfly checklist surveys anywhere they choose from Panama and the Caribbean islands, west to Hawaii and north to arctic Canada and Alaska. |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | Observers are encouraged to photograph every species they encounter, rare or common, to act as vouchers for their observations. eButterfly encourages participants to submit photos of their observations as vouchers for species verification. Photographs are processed in a way that is comparable to how a natural history museum traditionally works with a specimen. The eButterfly participant is analogous to the collector, the crowd-sourced identification system is analogous to the determiner, and eButterfly acts as the curator. eButterfly users validate or suggest corrections to observations with and without photographs based on species’ known ranges and phenology. Additionally, eButterfly users can add identifications and report and comment on others’ observations, and this provides another mechanism for increased data quality. |
Method step description:
- eButterfly documents the presence or presumed absence of species as well as abundance through checklist data. To report butterfly observations, a web interface engages participants to submit observations through three interactive steps. After logging into their eButterfly account to enter observations, participants are asked where they observed butterflies using an online mapping tool to select an existing or new location. Step two asks participants to indicate which of four different protocols they used to count butterflies. Traveling and area counts are effort-based sampling protocols, which require submitting both the amount of time spent butterfly watching and the distance traveled or area searched. Timed counts lack the spatial component and only record the total amount of time spent observing butterflies. The fourth protocol is a less rigorous option, called ‘‘casual observation”, which requires only date, location, and species observed to describe the sampling event. Participants are encouraged to use the most rigorous protocols when possible. The final step presents a checklist of the butterflies known from the state or province where the outing occurred. The participant fills in the number of individuals seen for each species and can upload photographs they captured of those species during the outing. Although “sight only” observations are accepted, eButterfly encourages participants to include photos with their observations for species verification. Observations are tagged as photograph, specimen, or sight observations. Other ancillary information such as counts of each life stage, host plants, sex, behaviors, and other notes, can also be added. At the end of the checklist, participants are presented with a final question that asks if they are submitting a checklist of all butterflies observed during the count. This is an important question that allows data consumers to determine if this is a complete presence/presumed absence checklist, which is more informative than presence-only data.
Bibliographic Citations
- Prudic, K.L.; McFarland, K.P.; Oliver, J.C.; Hutchinson, R.A.; Long, E.C.; Kerr, J.T.; Larrivée, M. (2017) eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation. Insects 8 (2), 53. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects8020053
- Larrivee M, Prudic KL, McFarland KP, Zhang, X. and J Kerr 2020. eButterfly: a citizen-based butterfly database in the biological sciences. http://www.e-butterfly.org http://www.e-butterfly.org
- Soroye, P., Ahmed, N., & Kerr, J. T. (2018). Opportunistic citizen science data transform understanding of species distributions, phenology, and diversity gradients for global change research. Global change biology, 24(11), 5281-5291. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14358
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | afff5f4d-742e-4db0-b750-6766306f3a0a |
|---|---|
| https://ipt.vtatlasoflife.org/resource?r=ebutterfly_species_list |