Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Amphibian and reptile fact sheets now online

Through a partnership with Alabama DCNR's "Outdoor Alabama," ALAPARC now has amphibian and reptile fact sheets online for each Alabama species (some species info is in progress and will be posted as it is developed). Huge props to Dave and Laura Laurencio for getting things linked up and for being awesome web gurus, in general.

Let us know what you think. Are the fact sheets too technical? Just right? Terrible? Feel free to give us your input on what works, what errors we've overlooked, and what needs improvement.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, nice.

Rob said...

FWIW, I go to http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20o?guide=Anura when I want to identify a frog. Looking at a mere 4 traits, one can drastically narrow down the choices to identify a frog. Just learning the four different things to look for will definitely help the next time I see another frog. This site also shows several photos if each species for clarity of identification.

When visiting the DCNR amphibian and reptile facts sheet, if one does not already know the exact species, they are left to click through all the links one by one until they find a look-a-like. Using the DCNR site, I'd have never been able to figure out what frog I recently saw because the online photo is not very clear. See photo number 3 in the link: http://mobilepaddler.blogspot.com/2009/10/10302009-bayou-saragunnison-creek.html

I highly encourage you to do like R. Graves Lovell and DCNR did with their awesome aquatic plants site: http://www.outdooralabama.com/fishing/freshwater/where/ponds/p/ap/guide/

Your initial amphibian and reptile fact sheets would be way better if it had thumbnails for each of the amphibian and reptile species instead only offering the user a long list of common and technical names with a lot of text to read through. The detailed information should be presented after clicking on the species thumbnail.

You are on the right track though by documenting what amphibian and reptiles can be found in Alabama.