None of the taxon pages currently display TDWG Regions. I expect this could be a fruitful avenue for future content development, especially if the data were imported. I used the map tool in the taxon description editor to select TDWG Regions for ~15 species. Unfortunately those changes were lost during subsequent development, but I had mixed feelings about the results. For example, how do you map a 'Neotropical distribution'? Does that include all of South America up through all of Mexico, or is it more accurate to exclude southern South America and northern Mexico? The TDWG regions do not allow for selection of administrative units below the province/state level, and species tend not to feel confined by political boundaries. However, when combined with specimen data, these coarse-scale maps have the advantage of at least being able to demonstrate the basic global distribution of a species even when specimen data is not available for particular portions of it. Also including the specimen data should help give the impression that the populations are much more localized than the shaded TDWG regions imply.
Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical):
Ed Baker,
Katherine Bouton
Alice Heaton
Dimitris Koureas,
Laurence Livermore,
Dave Roberts,
Simon Rycroft,
Ben Scott,
Vince Smith
None of the taxon pages currently display TDWG Regions. I expect this could be a fruitful avenue for future content development, especially if the data were imported. I used the map tool in the taxon description editor to select TDWG Regions for ~15 species. Unfortunately those changes were lost during subsequent development, but I had mixed feelings about the results. For example, how do you map a 'Neotropical distribution'? Does that include all of South America up through all of Mexico, or is it more accurate to exclude southern South America and northern Mexico? The TDWG regions do not allow for selection of administrative units below the province/state level, and species tend not to feel confined by political boundaries. However, when combined with specimen data, these coarse-scale maps have the advantage of at least being able to demonstrate the basic global distribution of a species even when specimen data is not available for particular portions of it. Also including the specimen data should help give the impression that the populations are much more localized than the shaded TDWG regions imply.