Creating a Coleoptera database

Community and Forum → Entomological collections → Creating a Coleoptera database

Трофим, 19.11.2010 1:20

I am applying with such an idea and request. When working on a specific topic in a particular family, you face the problem of finding information. I think that many of us in electronic libraries have a lot of literature that we constantly download from Internet resources, but do not always get around to using it. As a result, when a review is made for a particular family, it suddenly turns out that there is not enough information for 4-10 species. Where to look for it, often it is in the bins of literature, which we have long forgotten. But the use of PDF files when the page numbering does not correspond to reality and you press Ctrl+Shift+N and as a result you get to the wrong page and start dragging the slider to the desired page. All this takes sometimes hours of time in the complex. Perhaps someone just prints out pages with a table of contents for themselves, or perhaps someone has a rich library. There are pros and cons here. Pros-it's nice to hold a book in your hands, it's better for vision, and it's somehow more pleasant under your paw in our 21st century, at least sometimes to break away from the computer. Cons a good library requires a lot of money, and large apartments.
But it's all lyrics.

About the case. When I was writing my master's thesis, in order to pass all my fees according to the classical scheme (zoogeography, trophic analysis, nomenclature, etc.), I had to turn to more than one monograph and more than one article. Moreover, some books had to be flipped through in electronic format several times, spending time on this. So in order to put together information on the fauna of barbels in Moldova, I had to review about 8 works:
1 Plavilshchikov N. N. 1936. Woodcutter beetles, part 1 (Fauna of the USSR. Insects coleoptera, vol. 21). Moscow-L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1936. 611 p. (53) Plavilstshikov N. N. 1936. [Fauna of the URSS. Insecta Coleptera. Vol.21. Cerambycidae, pt.1]. - Moscow, Leningrad. AN SSS
2 Plavilshchikov N. N. 1940. Woodcutter beetles, part 2 (Fauna of the USSR. Insects of Coleoptera, vol. 22). Moscow-L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 784 p. (59) Plavilstshikov N. N. 1940. [Fauna of the URSS. Insecta Coleptera. Vol.22. Cerambycidae pt.2]. - Moscow, Leningrad. AN SSSRPubl. 785p. [in Russian]
3 Plavilshchikov N.N. 1958. Woodcutter beetles, part 3 (Fauna of the USSR. Insects coleoptera, T. 23). Moscow-L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 589 p. (60) Plavilstshikov N. N. 1958. [Fauna of the URSS. Insecta Coleptera. Vol.23, №.1. Cerambycidae. Pt.3. Subfamily Lamiinae, pt.1]. - Moscow, Leningrad. AN SSSR Publ. 592p. 4 Cherepanov
A. I. Barbels of Northern Asia (Lamiinae: Pterocoptini-Agapanthiini). Novosibirsk: Nauka Publ., 1984-214 p
. 5 Cherepanov A. I. Barbels of Northern Asia (Lamiinae: Saperdini-Tetraopini). Novosibirsk: Nauka Publ. 1985. 256 p
. 6 Cherepanov A. I. Cherepanova N.E. Wood-cutting beetles of the willow forests of Siberia Moscow: Nauka, 1975. 208 p
. 7 Danilevsky M. L., Miroshnikov A. I. 1985 Wood-cutting beetles of the Caucasus (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae). Determinant. Краснодар, 1985. 419 с. (39)
8 Danilevsky M.L., 2009 A check list of the longicorn beetles (Cerambycoidae) of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. // http://www.cerambycidae.net/ (28.07.2009)

And what to do when there is a need to learn new species, for example, I missed something during the review, or a new species was identified in the fauna of the country, etc. Again, you have to leaf through the same books in electronic format (I took something from the library) to find a description of the species. This is extremely inconvenient and not productive, given that the nomenclature in old publications is outdated, and you have everything in electronic format.

You can spend a lot of time to create a general list of the table of contents of at least 10 books on the fauna of the USSR, available in, say, our electronic home library. Or you can join forces and do the same amount of work 5-10 times faster. As a result, we will get an interactive database (not just photocopies of the tables of contents of outdated nomenclature), with a quick call to the view (modern nomenclature), and coordinates (author, article, monograph, page). Therefore, anyone interested in the availability of such a database, please unsubscribe to me at vitalii-trofim@rambler.ru

We will determine the number of people, distribute the amount of work for each of them, and then make an electronic data exchange in the circle of people who took part. Let's say Plavilshchikov has the year 1936 - there are 6 pages in the table of contents, we will distribute it to everyone and go ahead. We will keep a general record of who has processed how many units (types), so that it is not so that someone is resting and someone is plowing.

I want to make a database from the table of contents on barbels. We start with Plavilshchikov 1936, 1940, 1958 and go. There are interesting articles, books, someone constantly has something new, we send it to each other, put it in a common file. And most importantly, everyone will be able to create something like an atlas for their region later. For example, I take and cut out the page I need from the book and push it into the word. After all, having monographs, for example, we are primarily interested in those species that we have in the fauna. I think that the need for such a database should arise at least say 2-3 people on the forum.

I put up the first page. Plavilshchikov 1936 (at the moment I have made 3 pages – in order not to do double work, we will make a reservation). Barbels are a popular topic, so write to anyone who needs such a database, we will work. What is not clear, ask.

File/s:

download file doc.xls

size: 31k
number of downloads: 426

Comments

19.11.2010 4:37, RippeR

I took a course on the database. I'm going to make a unified database for insects and an application to it (for easy filling in). In the future, I'm going to organize a website through which certain individuals will be able to enter data about their arrests. Thus, there will be a single database where data on all captures will be stored.
Thanks for the idea with the literature. I was thinking of adding only captures to the database, but now I'm thinking of adding literature data as well. It should be a good thing.
As a result, there will be a wide range of usage options - from displaying a systematic table on the screen, to complete information about all the data of catches of a particular type, as well as references in the literature (including search by country, city, location, collector, subspecies, tribe, etc.).

So wait, I will try to cope completely in a couple of months, and maybe even launch a website (or a program with a database on a remote server (a program that receives data via the Internet))

Likes: 1

19.11.2010 22:49, RippeR

Why look at the dipterydatabase interface - I need the source code to evaluate (in this case, you show me a laptop, without saying its characteristics or even its name, and ask me to evaluate its stuffing.. All that could be said is how he organized access to the database on the site, maybe a little bit about the organization of tables, no more..)

I didn't understand anything about "parochial language restrictions" at all.. What is it all about?
I don't know what you know about databases, but it feels like you're too intimidated by horror stories about the complexity of programming. But I want to assure you that there is no need to invent anything here, and there are no special difficulties, since you do not need to invent your own programs with special methods of storing and processing data. What you need here is to know a little taxonomy (how it is built) and organize tables based on this knowledge as simply as possible, so that they are processed faster. (described without going into details). In general, you should not be afraid, there is an opportunity to file a good database.