When we have finished adding past caterpillar observations from all the states in the project area to the project, I will do some sort of summary of observations by state, taxonomy, etc. For now, however, you may enjoy checking out this heat map of project observations. Thanks to @carrieseltzer for the inspiration & the execution.
I just added our 10,000th observation! Happened to be a really nicely-lit picture of a Apatelodes torrefacta by @erasmus. These 10,000 observations include 477 species (at least - many have not yet been identified to species), and were made by a total of 3,107 observers. The most frequent species at this point are monarch (532), isabella tiger moth (506), eastern tent caterpillar moth (457), hickory tussock moth (387), & milkweed tussock moth (363). I have exported all the data and will put together a summary sometime in the next week with more stats.
Thanks to everyone who has been helping to add observations, especially @berkshirenaturalist, @kylejones, & @jtuttle. I would say that somewhere on the order of 10% of the Lepidoptera observations that I review are at the caterpillar stage, which means 10,000 caterpillar observations represent something like 100,000 total observations sifted through. Great work, everyone! Give yourselves a pat on the back.
Texas has nearly 50,000 Lepidoptera observations, nearly 45,000 of which are in the part of the state east of the 100th meridian (our project area). It would be overwhelming for a single person to review all these observations looking for caterpillars to add to the project (which has been our method for other states). In order to make it more manageable, I have divided East Texas into 15 sections, lumping counties with fewer observations & leaving counties with lots of observations as standalone sections. Each section has between 1,000 & 5,000 observations, except for Travis County (home to Austin), which has 7,088 all by itself. We will manage this the same way we have for the states: people can claim sections, post when they have completed them, and I will keep an updated list here at the top. Please keep track of users who have caterpillar observations that can't be added to the project, and send me a direct message with their usernames so that I can send them a message to invite them to the project. Here's the list - clicking a section will take you directly to an Identify page for that section. You can also see a map of the sections here.
Section A: Northwest & Central - eraskin (complete)
Section B: Northeast - eraskin (complete)
Section C: Southeast - eraskin (complete)
Section D: South - eraskin (complete)
Section E: Greater Houston - psweet (complete)
Section F: North Central (greater Dallas-Ft. Worth) - jtuttle (complete)
Section G: West Central* - eraskin (complete)
Section H: Tarrant County - jtuttle (complete)
Section I: Denton County - psweet (complete)
Section J: Dallas County - jtuttle (complete)
Section K: Travis County jtuttle (complete)
Section L: Hays County - eraskin (complete)
Section M: Williamson County - kylejones (complete)
Section N: Harris County - kylejones (complete)
Section O: Hidalgo County - jtuttle (complete)
*If you take Section G, please keep an eye on the coordinates of any caterpillars that you find, and don't add them to the project if the longitude is more than 100°W (-100 or beyond).
Last update: 2/4/2017, 1312
