New android app for herp distributions
I've been working on an android app (HerpDistributionSA) that is finally ready for use. It is an offline app that shows you what species occur in your immediate vicinity (DS or QDS) and lets you browse maps that have been generated from various sources (including iNaturalist).
Download and use the app here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-YXyl9fzyEhDYrCWKA-3UE5awxv-LjpQ
Or if you have an iphone (shame) or just use a pc, download the maps here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1S1EV-BCMmVreqVXTmd6Khm_xsVvbDzZK
The idea for this app was born on a fieldtrip in the Klein Karoo with Werner Conradie and Luke Kemp. We would often find interesting species in the field, but were unsure if they represented range extensions without the resources on hand. Loading the 2014 Reptile Atlas was a great offline resource, but lacked many recent records and excluded frogs. Louis frog app is also a great general resource, but the distribution maps are predictions based on confirmed records and lack the detail desirable for discovering new populations or range extensions. I decided that field herpetologists could do with a tool that can be used in the field to view species distribution ranges: but with no data requirements and up to date taxonomy and distribution records. After compiling some maps I realised that it would be useful and fun to show a list of species in the immediate vicinity of the user, so they do not need to trawl through maps to know which species have already been recorded. This was the main motivation for the app, as the maps could simply to loaded onto a device and viewed as images.
The other motivation I had for creating this app was during the Frog and Reptile IUCN RedList assessments (2015 and 2017). Locality data is gathered from all possible sources to help in the assessments, but often the data is in such poor condition that somebody has to go through the data and wade through coordinate typos, mis-identifications, georeferencing errors, low precision coordinates and really all sorts of problems. This data is then sent back to the sources which are requested to make the changes, however, these changes are often never made (for numerous reasons) and come the next assessment (or any scientific data request) the same data vetting is required, and using the same data from before is problematic for institutions that are constantly updating and correcting their databases (as they should be doing). I wanted to present the data that we currently have in our 'source' institutions, so that people can challenge data accuracy and put pressure on these institutions to get their data into shape, and not just left alone somewhere on a hard-drive. The great advantage of platforms such as iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/home) and Reptile/FrogMap (http://vmus.adu.org.za/vm_projects.php?) is that you can pick up an error and directly go verify it on their websites (using filters and searches) and correct it if necessary. Maybe other institutions will someday adopt a similar strategy by making their databases (such as specify) searchable online.
