Contributor instructions
Types of contributions
1. Arizona Tree of Life pages
2. Lepidopteran morphology project (homology annotation project)
3. Published data matrices of morphology and/or aligned molecular sequence
Note: Contributions 1 and 2 are in the process of being merged into a single entry point.
If you are a twig leader, your instructions are here.
1. Instructions for writing Arizona Tree of Life pages:
A. Contact your twig leader to express your interest and get their support (You may be asked to join an existing team).
B. If you need to add taxa to your branch, contact the Tree of Life project and request to be a Scientific Core Contributor. Arizona ToL staff will confirm that you have access to your branch and help you obtain necessary software.
C. Use our beta template to create your pages. You must be logged in to Leptree.net. On the right sidebar menu, go to “My Content Tools” and select “Template (beta)”. Enter the name of your taxon. The Tree of Life paragraphs are under the tab marked “Tree of Life.” Comments on the template are welcome.
Note: We will be working closely with Tree of Life to exchange our data. We will soon be importing all of their references, for example, and will institute regular synchronizing of our TOL paragraphs with their pages.
2. Instructions for contributing to the Lepidopteran morphology project (homology annotation project)
A. Contact your twig leader to express your interest and get their support.
B. Enter your data into our on-line interactive form to capture your information. You must be logged in to Leptree.net. On the right sidebar menu, go to “My Content Tools” and select “Template (beta)”. Enter the name of your taxon. The template should be self-explanatory, but comments on the template are welcome.
C. Leave comments on the draft glossary entries available in the LepGlossary
D. Conflicts in terminology will be flagged and discussed at public workshops at the Lepidopterists’ Society, Entomological Society of America, Entomological Society of Canada and SEL and other international venues.
3. Published data matrices of morphology and/or aligned molecular sequence
Venue for contributing matrices is under development. Please visit MorphoBank for an example of a potential format.
Instructions pending
Uploading images
Uploading data matrices
Morphology work
Voucher material
This is a good point that needs to incorporated into our description. Our general practice, except for the tiniest moths, is to use only head and/or thorax for DNA extraction, leaving the abdomen and genitalia in alcohol as a further voucher.
More ways to contribute
I think we should add lots of things here:
1. Adding projects to the project directory
2. Adding references
3. Participating in the forums
4. Commenting on anything
5. Adding images
An update letter?
A short and sweet letter to the main list serve with these 5 points would be great. May help to spur contributions.
Voucher material
I note that you are posting wing images as vouchers presumably of tissue samples. Are genitalia also being preserved as vouchers, and if so, how?