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I am a big fan of infographics and generally good presentations of data. Nathan Yau’s site, Flowing Data, is an excellent place to pick up new ideas, tutorials and to be entertained (see also Nathan’s take on the Bristol Stool Chart).

Working on a taxonomic catalogue can get very dry and for a non-taxonomist it looks incredibly boring. Traditional printed catalogues are the foundation of most biological studies (the intricacies I may go into another time) but now we are starting to make entirely digital catalogues. When our online Coreoidea catalogue is finished I hope to produce some interesting representations of the data. One of the potential ideas would be a heatmap for worldwide species distribution, looking similar to this map for “touristiness” (seen on Flowing Data):

"World map color-coded by level of touristiness, based on analysis of photos on Panoramio. Yellow indicates high touristiness, red medium touristiness, and blue low touristiness. Areas having no Panoramio photos at all are grey. " By:-www.bluemoon.ee

I think data visualisations and infographics need to be used more often as they can provide information in an accessible way. The first topic in this year’s Reith Lectures will be “The Scientific Citizen” by Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society. Rees will discuss how scientists need to do more in helping the public understand scientific issues that affect us all, rather than relying on the government and the media. I am certain that good visualisations and infographics will play an important part in delivering good science to the public.

The first Reith Lecture will be on Radio 4, Tuesday 1st June at 0900.

I recently purchased MapMate, a biological recording program for natural history in the UK. Whilst you can record a range of organisms using MapMate, I intend to use it primarily for recording insects.

The distributions of British records are now often given using both the traditional Watsonian vice-county divisions and a government agency (Ordnance Survey) grid reference system (both are shown below). In MapMate you specify both in the record for a particular site.

British mapping systems: Watsonian vice-counties (left) and grid reference (right). These images are adapted from the Biological Records Centre online resources.

The grid reference squares are 100km² and represented by two letters. To describe smaller areas in these squares, successive figures are given after the letters, one for each axis. Each pair of figures refers to an area that is ten times smaller than the last, so two figures would refer to a 10km² area and six figures would refer to a 100m² area.

Six-figure grid references are the smallest generally acceptable area to have in a recording but are what I’m finding the most problematic and time consuming. After getting used to other online map services, such as Google Maps/Earth and the Flickr map, using our Ordnance Survey site is an irritating experience that makes me feel that they prefer you to buy paper maps: it only displays a 1km² grid, doesn’t always display the x and y axis coordinates, and has a small map (400×400 pixel) display which is sluggish to move around.

I am still thinking about what the easiest way work out six-figure grid references is. I think I may resort to paper maps with a transparent overlay. If anyone has got an easier way, please let me know! I want a system that will be usable for areas that greater than 1km², like country parks.