Who are we?

We are undergraduate students at the University of Illinois who work with Mandala. Our tasks include raw data entry (specimen entry, plant associations, illustration entry, reprint entry) as well as data interpretation (geocoding specimen localities, distribution maps). Despite our intimate dealings with insects, our formal entomological training is quite limited. Fortunately, our major tasks involve the less biological aspects of specimen information (e.g., collection locality, collector, etc.).

Why this project?

During the course of entering the specimens into Mandala, we have encountered many consistant sources of label ambiguity. In many cases, a minor amount of research with the aid of a computer can help resolve the problem. In others, only personal knowledge from the collector and/or collection notes can. Both cases are time consuming and often introduce error into the data.

The inspiration for this project was our frustration in trying to extract meaning from the ambiguities. Our hope is to present examples of those ambiguities in an informative, yet humorous, way. The first incarnation of this project was actually a poster entitled "Specimen Label Eccentricities from Antiquity to the Present," which was displayed at the Entomological Society of America conference in December, 1999.

Acknowledgements

Geographic information was verified using Microsoft® Encarta® Virtual Globe 99 and the USGS (United Stated Geological Survey).

This is Stu Dent, your guide through the wonderful world of ambiguous labels. He is easily confused and not shy about saying so.

Next