Description
The Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL).
The phenology and abundance estimates derived from the systematic observations performed by BMS-IL observers, serve as excellent indicators for trends in biodiversity, impacts of land-use change, and climate change. Particularly, due to Israel's geographic location, the migration of desert species serves as a valuable indicator of the impacts of extreme weather events on biodiversity.
We share our data openly with the philosophy that transparency and sharing are routes for rapid knowledge generation, cooperation, and capacity building. New collaborations are extremely valuable to make the most of the data. Researchers are more thus encouraged to contact the dataset owners to collaborate on joint analyses and meta-analyses.
Note the dataset can also be explored here: http://www.gluecad.com/buttdb/hompage.asp?lng=eng
Data Records
The data in this sampling event resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 7,329 records.
2 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Peer I (2014): Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL). v6.17. ILS - Israeli Lepidopterists’ society. Dataset/Samplingevent. http://cloud.gbif.org/eubon/resource?r=butterflies-monitoring-scheme-il&v=6.17
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is ILS - Israeli Lepidopterists’ society. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 647ae6f8-8e26-4189-b448-02b45b7ad884. ILS - Israeli Lepidopterists’ society publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Israel.
Keywords
samplingevent; Other; Occurrence; butterflies; Lepidoptera; Israel; Systematic monitoring
Contacts
- Metadata Provider ●
- Originator ●
- Point Of Contact
- Content Provider
- Principal Investigator
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3696-3496
Geographic Coverage
Israel Borders
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [27.7, 33.77], North East [33.44, 36] |
|---|
Taxonomic Coverage
Butterflies
| Order | Lepidoptera |
|---|
Temporal Coverage
| Start Date / End Date | 2009-10-02 / 2015-10-31 |
|---|
Project Data
Israeli Butterfly systematic Monitoring Scheme
| Title | Israel Butterflies Systematic Monitoring Scheme |
|---|---|
| Funding | Private |
| Study Area Description | Established in April 2009, the Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL) covers Israeli's geographic borders and runs starting 20 transects to about 40 transects in 2015. |
| Design Description | Transect lengths range between 300 and 600 m in length, and divide into 50 m sections. Transect usually cover a single habitat type. In each visit, transect-walkers count all butterfly species that can be seen within a range of 5 m range. Special behaviours (egg laying or nectaring), as well as butterfly larvae or eggs, can be registered as well. Transect walks in Europe are performed weekly, but here in Israel, we conduct them once in two weeks from the beginning of October to the end of June - to account for the longer activity period of butterflies in Israel, and the impacts of climate change. |
The personnel involved in the project:
- Curator
- Content Provider
- Principal Investigator
Sampling Methods
Transects are divided into 50m sections and range between 300m and 600m in total length. A transect usually covers a single habitat type. The observer counts the number of every butterfly species that can be seen within a 5m range for each section within the transect. As in all other systematic Butterfly Monitoring Schemes (BMS), the entire transect must always be walked (partial transect walks are not recorded). Furthermore, when no butterfly species are seen for the entire transect, the absence event is still recorded using “-s00” standard notation. Special behaviours such as egg laying or drinking nectar as well as butterfly larvae or eggs can be recorded as well.
| Study Extent | Transect walks for Butterfly Monitoring Schemes (BMS) in Europe are usually performed weekly, but here in Israel, we conduct them once every two weeks from the beginning of October to the end of June - to account for the longer activity period of butterflies in Israel, and the impacts of climate change. |
|---|---|
| Quality Control | Every reported record is flagged "forApproval". Record status is changed to "Approved" upon and by expert only. Species out of season or distribution area are flagged for additional verification. |
Method step description:
- Selection of location and route of transect is verified by a scientific/principal investigator.
- On the first visit to a new transect, the observer is guided by an expert along the transect. Note each section is numbered and marked.
- Start time and weather conditions are recorded first.
- During transect walk, the observer walks the entire transect and for each section records the count of every butterfly species that can be seen within a 5x5x5m imaginary cube (i.e., within a range of 2.5 m to the sides and 5 m front and above).
- To avoid errors in abundance calculations, individuals that cannot be identified to the species level are registered either by family or as a predefined complex of two or three similar species.
- Butterflies seen outside of the 5m range can be recorded by the observer as ‘Extra’ alongside the code of the nearest section (e.g. 5-extra). However, these extra observations are regarded as sporadic data and are never included in the total number of butterflies observed within the controlled transect area.
- Time ends is recorded.
- If no butterflies are seen for the entire transect, the observer types "non seen" to ensure that the absence event is still registered. Note this is important later on when modelling butterfly flight curves and abundances taking into consideration all observations events.
- Observer logs in to the server and types in the data. Absence events are recorded using “-s00” – standard notation.
- Data is ready for verification by the expert.
Bibliographic Citations
- For more information on Israel's butterflies, see Benyamini, D. (2002) A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Israel, Including of Mt. Hermon, Sinai and Jordan (Revised edition). Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem (in Hebrew. Maps and activity periods are illustrated visually).
- For effective data analysis, see: Dennis, E. B., Freeman, S. N., Brereton, T., Roy, D. B. (2013), Indexing butterfly abundance whilst accounting for missing counts and variability in seasonal pattern. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 4: 637–645. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12053 https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12053
- Schmucki, R., G. Pe'er, D. B. Roy, C. Stefanescu, C. Van Swaay, T. H. Oliver, M. Kuusaari, A. Van Strien, L. Ries, J. Settele, M. Musche, J. Carnicer, O. Schweiger, T. Brereton, A. Harpke, J. Heliölä, E. Kühn, and R. Julliard (2015) Regionally informed abundance index for supporting integrative analyses across butterfly monitoring schemes. Journal of Applied Ecology, online first. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12561 https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12561
- For guidelines on systematic butterfly monitoring see Van Swaay, C., Regan, E., Ling, M., Bozhinovska, E., Fernandez, M., Marini-Filho, O.J., Huertas, B., Phon, C.-K., K”orösi, A., Meerman, J., Pe’er, G., Uehara-Prado, M., Sáfián, S., Sam, L., Shuey, J., Taron, D., Terblanche, R., and Underhill, L. (2015). Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring. Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, Leipzig, Germany. GEO BON Technical Series 1, 32pp. http://www.geobon.org/Downloads/reports/GEOBON/2015/Global%20Butterfly%20Monitoring_Web.pdf
Additional Metadata
All sampling events in this dataset are recorded at the section level. Users who wish to derive butterfly density, please sum up all butterflies observed in all sections within a given transect, and calculate the area as "total-transect-length x 5m". The total number of sections within a given transect can be found in the measurements or facts data.
| Purpose | The main objective of the scheme is to provide reliable data for assessing the status and trends in the abundance and phenology of Israel's butterflies, for both conservation and research purposes. |
|---|---|
| Alternative Identifiers | 647ae6f8-8e26-4189-b448-02b45b7ad884 |
| http://cloud.gbif.org/eubon/resource?r=butterflies-monitoring-scheme-il |