Lucid May 2017 Newsletter
- Software Updates
- New and Updated Keys (including those Coming Soon)
- Visitors
- Lucid Spotlight - Landcare Research in New Zealand
Software Updates
Lucid v3.6 Updated
A new Lucid v3.6 update is now available. It adds additional features and corrects several minor bugs. Changes include:
- Support for importing media against the features and states, using the media list format.
- Exporting full path feature and state lists to a text file. This is useful when wanting to create the media list import file. E.g. Fact Sheet Fusion supports importing this format.
- Options to quickly drop feature and state media.
- Fixed a JavaScript Player deployment issue where media file references contained non-ASCII characters.
- Support for transparent thumbnail image formats.
- new numeric state selection "out of play" warning, if the numeric features no longer applies to the remaining entities.
Click here to download the latest update
Fact Sheet Fusion
A new update to Fact Sheet Fusion (v2.0.5.111) is now available (free to existing v2 licence holders).
This update adds improvements to the Import content (HTML, MS Word and Lucid keys) options, and several bug fixes and other improvements.
Click here for more information on this update.
To purchase Fact Sheet Fusion click here.
For Fact Sheet Fusion v1 licence holders purchase the upgrade here.
New and Updated Keys
Five popular identification keys updated with latest Lucid technology
Several popular commercial keys (Australian Orchid Genera, Euclid, Families of Flowering Plants of Australia, Wattle: Acacias of Australia and AusGrass) have now been updated into the latest JavaScript based Lucid Player enabling them to run on any modern web browser.
For more information click here.
Instituto Politecnico Nacional has released two new keys
PezFam 1.0: Interactive Keys for the Identification of Fish Families in NW Mexico
ElasmoMex 1.0: Interactive Taxonomic Keys for Mexican Elasmobranchs Families
https://coleccion.cicimar.ipn.mx/
Update to Rainforest Plants of Australia – Rockhampton to Victoria
Both the USB edition and Lucid mobile App have been updated. The iOS edition of the App also contains several improvements to the interface.
For updates to the USB edition see: https://rainforests.net.au/updates/
The mobile App updates are available via the Google and Apple App stores.
FunKey
The mobile app edition of FunKey has now been updated, for existing users this update should become automatically available via your device update application.
The USB edition of FunKey will also be updated in the near future. This update will be available to existing users as a download. The USB update will include the new JavaScript based Lucid Player, enabling the key to be used across any modern web browser.
Check the announcement forum for updates on this release
Coming Soon
Lepidopteran Families of Biosecurity Concern
The Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is set to release Lepidopteran Families of Biosecurity Concern, by Stacey Anderson and Glenn Bellis - An interactive Lucid key to assist in recognising families of targeted Lepidoptera of biosecurity concern using morphological characters of the adult.
This key should be available in May 2017 as a Lucid mobile app.
Suburban and Environmental Weeds of South East Queensland
Work has begun on an update of this popular key. Planned upgrades include:
- Adding additional weed species.
- Replacement plant recommendations for undesired garden species.
- Biosecurity Act 2016 information.
- User reporting function and repository.
- Email fact sheet/link to printable PDF function.
- Fact sheet content search engine.
Updated keys from USDA APHIS ITP
Aquarium and Pond Plants of the World (https://idtools.org/id/appw) is currently undergoing a major update, nearly doubling the number of taxa included. The significantly expanded new edition will be called Aquatic Plants of the World, and it will be available as a Lucid Mobile App towards the end of 2017. The authors of Edition 3 are Shaun Winterton, Julia Scher, Jamie Burnett, and Amanda Redford.
AntKey, by Eli Sarnat and Andrew Suarez, (https://antkey.org) has been in high demand as an offline version, and will be released as a Lucid Mobile App around September 2017.
Visits
Malaysian Visit
In March Geoff Norton visited The Faculty of Agriculture at the Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Selangor, Malaysia to give a public lecture on the use of Lucid for facilitating the development of decision support tools. Following the lecture, Geoff had discussions with various UPM staff and then visited Dr Sivapragasam (Regional Director of the CABI - South East Asia office) and other CABI colleagues to discuss potential links on crop diagnostics.
Chinese Visitors to Identic (Brisbane)
Identic was visited by two Chinese academics earlier this year. Emeritus Professor Cheng Jiaan, from Zhejiang Agricultural University, Hangzhou, PRC, is a world expert on rice pests and particularly the brown planthopper, that has been an increasing problem in Chinese rice crops. Prof Cheng is an advisor to a major project in China aimed at reducing pesticide use in rice in the next five years and part of his visit was to discuss the role that Lucid Mobile apps might play to achieve this result.
In April, Dr Zhongxian Lu from the Zhejiang Academy of Sciences visited. Dr Lu is the Coordinator of the National pesticide reduction project and we had further discussions with him about potential collaboration. Both visitors also visited colleagues at The University of Queensland to discuss these and other aspects of pest management.
Spotlight on Lucid users – Landcare Research in New Zealand
Introduction
Landcare Research NZ, a Crown Research Institute, has created nine online plant keys hosted at https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/resources/identification/plants. These keys, mostly funded by the New Zealand Terrestrial & Freshwater Biodiversity Information System Programme (TFBIS), have been available since 2005 and will be updated to the Lucid JavaScript player edition in the near future.
The main Landcare Research authors, David Glenny, Murray Dawson, and Kerry Ford (at the Allan Herbarium), have collaborated with other colleagues, including Trevor James (weed scientist at AgResearch) and Jeremy Rolfe (Department of Conservation), to develop the following keys:
Key | No#. taxa | Brief Details |
---|---|---|
Key to flowering plant genera | 1090 genera | Native and naturalised genera (not cultivated-only) |
NZ Weeds | 667 taxa | Similar to Environmental Weeds of Australia Lucid key - same architecture |
NZ grasses | 501 taxa | Native and naturalised species |
Native orchids | 123 species | Plus many tag-names |
Coprosma spp. | 53 species | All native |
Cotoneaster | 26 species | Wild or in cultivation |
Weedy daisy | 50 taxa | Naturalised and weedy Asteraceae in the South Pacific region |
- A Lucid CD-ROM key to Australasian liverwort and hornwort genera, created by David Glenny and Bill Malcolm and including 181 New Zealand and Australian genera.
- Two keys developed by two Teacher Fellows, hosted at Landcare Research:
- Native plants for schools and marae (61 taxa)
- Biodiversity assessment at Styx Mill Conservation Reserve (74 species of plants, birds, insects, etc.)
- Two free Lucid Mobile apps available on Google Store and iTunes:
- Coprosma: a genus of native New Zealand woody plants. The app was created to help identify plants during ecological survey work, but is also useful to students, researchers, and others in the New Zealand botanical community.
- NZ native orchids: 120–160 species of native orchids in New Zealand, including those that don’t yet have formal botanical names. Many native orchids are endangered and accurate identification should assist in their conservation. Members of the New Zealand Native Orchid Group (https://www.nativeorchids.co.nz) and the NatureWatch NZ project (https://naturewatch.org.nz/projects/new-zealand-native-orchids) contributed numerous images to this key.