Taxonomic Expert Panel

Instructions for Species Identification

The Expert Panel has the very important task of identifying the records submitted to the Virtual Museum. The following instructions apply to all projects, with some variations in how confirmation of species identification is handled by the individual project.

  1. after login you must select the project you work on, click on the appropriate project logo (the project can be selected before login as well)
  2. a search page will be presented that applies only to the currently selected project; this is also available from the side menu (‘search VM’ under the selected project)
  3. in the 'advanced search' section set the following:
    Sp. id confirmed => no
    and click the search button in this section;
    you can, of course, try different settings to refine your search
  4. the search will give you a thumbnail list of records; click on one of the pictures to see the record’s data and make your identification
  5. the full-record form is displayed; below the record details you have the thumbnails of all the photos for the current record
  6. in order to make an id you need to check the larger images; depending on the size of the original photo, you can view a medium or large image; the original photo is also available for some projects
  7. click the button below the image to enlarge the photo; in photo view mode you can look at the various images and sizes
  8. when done click the button 'return to full record display' at to top of the form
  9. the full-record form is displayed; below the thumbnails is the form to do the species identification
  10. enter your identification through the pull-down menu; if you want you can add a comment, but it is not required (useful to point things when the id is not possible or tentative, or for interesting behaviour, habitat, etc)
  11. click ‘save comments’
  12. this saves the id and, depending on the project, it can change the status of the record to id confirmed
  13. click the button ‘back to selection’ to pick the next record for id

Panel members can edit and/or delete their own comments, but not those by other panel members.

Panel members with data-manager privileges have access to additional options in the full-record view:

  1. some information in the record’s data can be edited
  2. the species identification status of the record can be changed in two ways:
    – the existing identification can be ‘unconfirmed’, i.e. the species code assigned to the record is set to 0;
    – the species identification can be manually confirmed from one of the comments entered by other panel members

Species identification confirmation depends on the settings for each particular project, some projects opted for manual confirmation for all records, others have an automated confirmation depending on agreement between a given number of panel members, i.e. two matching ids. The automatic confirmation of species id can be set for each species individually through the checklist, so that easily identifiable species require a single id and others may require a consensus of two or three experts. It can also be set to manual confirmation, in which case the final decision rests with the project's appointed taxonomic expert.

[ Page served: March 19, 2024, 10:12 +0200]

The Biodiversity and Development Institute (BDI)
and
The FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology
Department of Biological Sciences - University of Cape Town
 
This work, except photographs, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright of images uploaded into the Virtual Museum remains with the photographers.

The Biodiversity and Development Institute (BDI)          The Biodiversity and Development Institute (BDI)          The FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology          UCT