[Odonata-l] annual odonate surveys

[Joshua Stuart Rose]

I've never heard of something like this for odonata, but Sapsucker  
Woods (of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY) had something  
much like it for birds. Basically, they had a big white-board with a  
list of all of the regularly occurring bird species for the area.  
There were also columns with blanks for entering date, time,  
location, name of observer, and other pertinent information. Anyone  
seeing a species for the first time in a given year would drop by the  
Lab of O and fill out the data for that species. It spurred a certain  
amount of competitive spirit to get out into the field and find  
something to get your name up on the board (I only ever got up there  
once; Olive-sided Flycatcher, I think it was spring 2001, and nearly  
ruptured my transmission in the process).

Joshua Stuart Rose
1220 Kerria Ave.
McAllen TX
opihi at mindspring.com
956-664-9915

Duke Natural History Society
http://www.biology.duke.edu/dnhs/


On Oct 31, 2006, at 5:24 PM, John C. Abbott wrote:

> I think this is a great idea Dennis.  I'm imagining that it would  
> be nice and convenient to have these lists in one place,  
> searchable, and easily accessible.  OdonataCentral is going through  
> a substantial programmatic improvement and it would be easy to  
> incorporate and automatically maintain a system that would work in  
> conjunction with the checklists already available in the new roll  
> out of OdonataCentral.  In fact it could even be expanded to the  
> county level as well.  Though the new OdonataCentral won't be ready  
> for a while, I think we can fairly easily integrate this into the  
> current system in the short run.  I will see what we can do to have  
> a 2007 yearbook of records ready to go by the new year.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dennis Paulson
>
> Those on CalOdes, the California odonate listserve, know all about  
> this, but I'd like to disseminate the idea.
>
> Kathy Biggs, the Odonata Central of California, has been  
> encouraging people in the state to get out there and find all of  
> the species known to occur in the state each year. She keeps a  
> running tally of species reported, and this year, for example, they  
> have reported 103 of the 111 species known from the state. This may  
> be the total for 2006, as the flight season rapidly shuts down. It  
> might prompt someone to ask about the status of the 8 species not  
> seen and why they weren't. In most cases, it will probably be  
> because no one visited the very few places they are known to occur.  
> Alternatively, they were sought and couldn't be found, which might  
> be of significance.
>
> This seems to be a great way to encourage people to get out in the  
> field, and in addition it prompts those in the field to look for  
> all species, common and rare, each year. By encouraging a search  
> for every regional species, we can continue to keep track of all  
> species in each state (or province, or country), an important  
> monitoring tool for those that are rare or peripheral or are known  
> to change in occurrence over time. And of course, the more time  
> spent in the field, the more we will learn anyway.
>
> Are there any other regions that pursue this survey strategy?