Development site -- Ontario Butterfly Atlas Online

Colin Jones, Ross Layberry and Alan Macnaughton

Maps on this site may be difficult to interpret -- general users should use the main TEA atlas site.

Maps with Charts

a) flight period by species for 4 forest regions (phenogram for 36 third-of-a-month periods), based on data for all years

b) 2001-2010 yearly frequency (i.e., # of records) by species for 4 forest regions

c) intensity of surveying of each square, as measured by the number of separate dates of records (1 or 2 dates = grey; 3 to 49 dates = red; 50 to 399 dates = black; and 400 dates or more = bright green). Clicking on any square brings up a chart showing the distribution of the dates surveyed by month-thirds (to show whether a particular square is always being visited at the same time of the year).

Info re Forest Regions Maps (a and b above)

To choose a particular species, choose "Options", then put in "Common name" in the left box, "=" in the middle box, and the relevant common name (e.g., Mourning Cloak) in the right box. Finally, click "apply."

Charts have been prepared by forest region using the Google Charts API. However, because of limits on the size of a server request imposed by Google, each of the 4 forest region is represented by a 100K block situated in that region (roughly speaking, in the areas of Niagara, Huntsville, Chaplearu and Polar Bear Provincial Park). Thus, after selecting a species (as described above), click on that block to see the chart (information window) for that region.

- moth maps for Dave Beadle

To display only the squares for a particular moth species, click on the link "options" in the upper left area of the map. The "filter" label will appear, as well as 3 boxes below it. For the left-hand box, click on downward-pointing arrow beside "Square_ID," and choose particular species, such as "1. Epimartyria auricrinella, Goldcap Moss-eater Moth." Then, in the middle box, click on the downward-pointing arrow beside it to change the box contents from "=" (the default) to ">". Finally, for the right-hand box, type in the number 0 (zero).

The intuition behind the above instructions is that the underlying data is the number of records on a particular species observed. Thus, the instructions are asking for a display of squares for which the number of Goldcap Moss-eater Moth records is greater than zero. Any number can be entered. Thus, for example, one could also display a map of squares where there are more than 12 records.

Once the three boxes are filled in, click on the word "Apply" and the map of the squares in which this species has been found will appear. By similar means, maps of any of the moth species recorded can be generated.

Clicking on any particular square will show an "info window" that displays text information -- at the moment, the number of records of all of the Saturnids and some of the Sphingids are displayed.

Maps

A total of 102,000 Ontario butterfly observations, mostly from 1969 to 2010, have been mapped in 7 ways. Access the type of maps on interest by clicking on the appropriate link below. When you are viewing a particular map, click on the square, county, park etc. to see a list of species for that geographical area. See the section "Using the Maps" below to view maps of individual species.

- 1) atlas of 10,747 10-kilometre squares

(a) with all data combined

(b) showing recency of observations for each individual species

- Show the map for a particular species by using filtering and choosing "Species" for the left-hand box, "=" for the middle box, and the species' common name for the right-hand box

- The colour of a square indicate how recent the last observation for that species in that square is:

red - last 5 years;
blue - not in last 5 years, but within 20 years
yellow - over 20 years

- The info window shows the most recent year the species was observed in that square and the number of records for that species for all years.

- For the moment there is no way to show the species list for this map. This shouldn't be hard, but I haven't figured it out yet.

- 2) atlas of 48 TEA counties

- 3) atlas of 40 or 50-kilometre circles around 7 major cities and Point Pelee National Park (note that although some of the circles show areas in the US and Quebec, the atlas does not include butterfly observations for those areas)

- 4) atlas of 6 national parks and 247 provincial parks

- 5) atlas of 4 forest regions (i.e., life zones -- Rowe, 1972)

- 6) atlas of 22 forest sections (subdivisions of forest regions)

Send comments and corrections to Alan Macnaughton (info@ontarioinsects.org).