Batra, P., G. Ponciroli, K.L. Gross, S.H. Gage, M. Colunga-Garcia, C. Baker, T. Bergsma, B. Fox, J. Gage, J. Golod, M. McCormick, G. Pederson, K. Sherfinski, K. Tindall
Presented at the Campus Symposium (2001-04-19 )
We have developed a website as part of an ongoing effort to collect and document commonly seen plants and insects on the LTER (http://lter.kbs.msu.edu/LTER_biocollections/home/). Target users include LTER researchers as well as school groups and community members who wish to know more about local flora and insect fauna. The website includes an image gallery (see Figure 1) with high resolution images of species along with their identification and life history descriptions. Images are searchable by family, keyword, species, and additionally for the insects, by functional group and common group. Plant images emphasize the families Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae, with photographs of different life history stages and close-ups of distinguishing traits of difficult to identify species. Insect images emphasize habitat and/or host plant associations. In addition to the image gallery, the herbarium database is accessible via the website, such that users can get accession numbers and locality information of any specimens housed in the KBS herbarium. Similar access to the insect collection database is under construction. The website and its underlying databases are constructed such that future LTER researchers may continue to add to the image galleries as well build upon well documented biological collections.
Back to meeting | Show |