EOL data validation

Step 1: To do the manual validation, the selected objects were first classified in three (3) categories based on the object content description (i.e. “title”). Thus, the objects with the following titles were ignored:

“Abundance”, Barcode data”, “Conservation Status”, “Description”, “Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships”,  “Functional adaptation”,  “General comments”, “General Description”, “Geographic Range”, “Global Abundance”, “Global Distribution”, “IDnature guides”, “Introduction”, “IUCN”, “IUCN Red List Assessment”, “Locations of barcode samples”, “National Distribution”, “National NatureServe Conservation Status”, “nomenclature”, “Number of Occurrences”, “Other Comments”, “Parasitoid Associations “, “Population”, “Predation”, “Range”, “Range Description”, “Records”, “Statistics of barcoding coverage”, “Taxonomy”, “The Flight Period”, and “Threats”.

The objects with the following titles were processed:

“Food Habits”, “Foodplant Associations”, “Habitat”, “Habitat and Ecology”.

Additionally, objects with out any title or those with titles referring to species names, both with general terms (i.e.  “names”), or specific ones like species or genera name (i.e. "Telipna sheffieldi", "Bibla") also were processed.

Step 2: For the objects classified as “to be processed”, a second file, a manual validation file, was generated coping the information of the columns “val”, “nmbr”, “id”, and “vid” from the extraction file. Five (5) additional columns were added with plant name, the plant family and with information about the origin of the data (“primary” when the data comes from direct field observation, and “secondary” when comes from revised literature or indirect sources), record source (“literature” when record comes from published literature, and “field observation” when comes from an direct observation in field), and the evidence reported for the association (“larval feed on”, “eggs lays on”, etc.).

Column name

Description

Example of content

val

Butterfly valid name according to checklist compiled in the project

Abaeis nicippe

nmbr

Butterfly name reported in EOL object

Abaeis nicippe (Cramer, [1779])

id

Butterfly species scientific name

177131

vid

EOL object code

http://eol.org/data_objects/14482346

plant

Host plant species scientific name

Cassia

plant. family

Name of the host plant family

Leguminosae

record type

Origin of the data

Primary :: Secondary

source

Origin of the data

Field observation :: Literature

evidence

Description of the observation that support the association

Ovipositing on the leaves :: Larval feeding

 

For each pair of butterfly and host plant names a separate row should be created with the corresponding item and page code. All the common and scientific names at any taxonomic level (species, genus, family or order) should be recorded. Common and generic plant names should be copy as shown in the original text, with out translations and without substitute it by their corresponding scientific name.

On going work: We did our first formal search for Pieridae family and found 3183 objects from 584 species. The majorities of these pages were classified as “to be processed” (1452). One Thousand twenty (1120) associations were recorded, corresponding to 240 butterfly species, and 818 host plant names (that includes scientific and common names).

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith