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I am a fan of Flickr and think it’s a wonderful place to store and tag photos. Recently I’ve been wondering about how useful Flickr is as an entomological resource and thought of a few questions:

• How many new insect photos are being added daily?
• How common are misidentifcations?
• How many insect photographers add geographic data (geotags)?
• What is the number of unique insects represented on Flickr?
• How could Flickr be used in an insect-based meta-analysis?

As I wrote this there were (searching everyone’s uploads with no filter):

• 839,123 results for ‘insect’
• 28,014 results for ‘hemiptera’
• 1,673 results for ‘pentatomidae’
• 816 results for ‘palomena prasina’

Flickr map of Palomena prasina © Yahoo 2009

I found that there have been around 1,000 extra hits for insect everyday in the past week and that searching for ‘palomena prasina on the Flickr map gave ~217 results (depending on the type of sort) which were spread around the UK, France, northern Spain, Germany, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

As I browsed through general search results for the Palomena prasina photos, I saw a few that were obvious misidentifications. I think that misidentifications are probably the biggest limiting factor that would be hard to control if you wanted to use Flickr tags/information in an academic way. Whilst there are plenty of very knowledgeable Flickr entomologists, it’s hard to know which photos are identified correctly.

Whilst the map search was interesting, it wasn’t overly useful in it’s basic form. I think that a more sophisticated map search might be possible using of the Flickr API, but you would still be limited by the proportion of images that have geographic data.

Finally, everyone tags and organises their photos differently. I try and enter in as much information as I can without it being too long or bothersome. For an insect shot I try and include: country, county, area name, specific location (like the nature reserve), class, order, family and genus+species. By doing this I can search for particular insects in different areas quite easily. I started added a few six-figure grid references to the images, but as every specimen has a map location, this isn’t a priority for me.

I feel that Flickr could be used in a more powerful way and have a few ideas how, but I’ll save that for another post.

For now, why not check out some of the Flick insect groups? I’ve linked a few below:

• British Bees, Wasps and Ants
• British Beetles
• British Bugs
• British Flies
• British Lepidoptera
• Fly Day Friday
• UK Orthoptera

I have had a busy past few days. I went insect hunting on Saturday and Sunday, spent a day taking cicada photos at the museum on Monday and had my MSc graduation ceremony on Wednesday.

On Saturday I met with Tristan to explore Rainham Marshes. This was the second time I had visited the marshes and unsurprisingly, they were much more lively than they were in March. I will write another post to cover what we saw at the marshes.

I spent Sunday at Imperial College’s Silwood Park campus with Malin and saw lots of hoverflies that I am yet to identify. We picked some nettles (Urtica dioica) to make nettle soup which was very tasty. We used a recipe from ‘Seaweed and Eat it: A Family Foraging and Cooking Adventure‘ by Fiona Houston and Xa Milne. I have not read any other wild food books for comparison, but it seems a reasonable book with anecdotes, history and folklore. We hope to try one of the seaweed recipes soon.

Finally, I wish to share a wonderful tool that Alan Phillips introduced me to: Grab a Grid Reference by Keith Balmer. If you do recording and need a quick site to look up grid references then this is the tool for you! It is easy to use and is much better than any other sites I have used (including the OS site). Thanks Alan!

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.