Read our latest newsletter and learn about: Big Data for Science and Conservation, New Tool for Creating Your Own Projects, eButterfly Taxonomy Updated, Wanted: Your Historic Data, Computer Vision: Keeping an Eye on eButterfly, Create Your New User Profile, eButterfly Tech Team Makes Us Shine, and Getting Started with eButterfly: Help, Tutorials, and More.
eButterfly, in partnership with the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), has created eButterflAI, an advanced image recognition algorithm that has learned to recognize the genus and species for most North American butterflies based on their location and image. The tool will soon be coming to eButterfly.org for everyone to use. Learn more…
Butterfly walks are not only a relaxing activity, but also an invaluable source of data for science. Join Dr. Federico Riva as he discusses the importance of the checklists recorded in eButterfly for his work: (i) the use of butterfly checklists to understand population changes and inform conservation practices; (ii) the importance of “imperfect detection” – our inability to see all butterflies when we are looking for them – and how we can maximize the number of butterflies that we see at a site; (iii) his current work with eButterfly, that leverages thousands of observations from community scientists to help understand regions of conservation priority across North America.
We are excited to have Dr. Federico Riva join us for a short fellowship. Over the next few months he will be working to map the distribution of North American butterflies, assessing trends in their populations, and helping to inform effective monitoring practices. We asked him to share a bit about his background and his work with butterflies. Welcome to the eButterfly team Dr. Riva!
Months in the making, we’ve just made substantial improvements and corrections to the taxonomic backbone for eButterfly. This will drastically improve the user experience when entering checklists and exploring data. Learn about all the details…
The 4th of July Butterfly Count season is here! Each year, hundreds of butterfly enthusiasts participate in a cooperative effort to count butterflies within established 15-mile diameter survey circles. Most counts depend on the efforts of multiple parties, with each individual or team checking different parts of the survey circle, then combining their counts into a final count total. These tallies are then used to compare between years. The counts are an important and long-running survey that help understand changes in butterfly populations at large scales. Your checklists can also be important for eButterfly too!
Our new eButterfly Projects tool allows you to easily and quickly create a hub for your event, club, class, or organization. An eButterfly Project creates a space for you that pools observations of eButterfly users together. You can automatically include all of the checklists and observations that fit the places, taxa, users, or dates that you specify. Whether you’re starting a community science effort, creating a home for your user group, or running a butterfly bioblitz; eButterfly Projects is the new tool for you.
Every time butterfly watchers raise binoculars and cameras to record a butterfly sighting, they collect important data. Recording the number, date, and location of each and every butterfly, no matter how common or rare, may seem trivial, even repetitive— but this detailed information can be invaluable to science and conservation. Join Rodrigo Solis Sosa, our Human Network and Data Coordinator, as he explains how to use eButterfly in this recorded webinar from April 27.
Have you ever wondered who is helping to identify and verify your butterfly observations? Or maybe you wanted to learn more about someone that sees a lot of butterflies in your area? Now you can! We just released the first version or eButterfly user profiles. The profile page has a small image, the user level, stats, and their most recent photos. We’ll be adding more features in the future too. Click on any user name in eButterfly and view their profile. Fill out your profile so that others can learn about you too! Learn how…
Forecasting species responses to climate change is integral to the development of adaptive and practical conservation decisions. Butterflies are climate-constrained in at least two ways, as ectotherms, the climate has a defining role in dictating where butterflies can live. Additionally, a warming climate may have huge impacts on their host plant availability. These constraints could mean certain butterfly species may have to move north, or up in elevation, to stay within their preferred temperature range. Predicting how butterflies might respond to such temperature and host plant shifts could inform decisions involving conservation prioritization, species management, and natural resource management.
