Welcome to the July Lucid newsletter. We hope you, your family and colleagues are safe and well during the continuing COVID-19 situation. Despite this current disruption, it does not seem to have slowed users’ interest in identification keys nor in creating them. The change in working environment and the general slowdown seems to have given many people a chance to think about projects they have had on the backburner and to get them underway. If you have time, please let us know about your key project. We are always keen to know about new applications of Lucid and are amazed at the diversity of interests when it comes to creating a key!

For our part, alongside our usual activity of supporting users, we have also been working to improve the Lucid platforms (Builder, Player, Mobile app and websites) as a part of our continual development process. Login to Lucidcentral (https://www.lucidcentral.org/my-account/) and check for an update.

Below we have outlined some of the latest keys released along with details of recent software updates.

Regards,

The Lucid Team

PS. If you did not receive this newsletter directly and you would like to be included in future newsletters subscribe at https://www.lucidcentral.org/blog/ 

Key Updates

We recently updated the Lucidcentral key listing and search interface and hope this makes finding keys much easier. The new interface displays details about the key in a more consistent way and now includes screen shots along with links to the online edition and app stores, where appropriate. Keys can be searched by keywords or by categories and tags. We still have some key listings to update but we are slowly getting them finalised. If you have a key that you would like listed, please send us the details. See the following FAQ on what to send us. https://www.lucidcentral.org/faq/can-i-have-my-key-hosted-on-lucidcentral/

An Early Screening Tool for Exotic Scarab Pests to Australia

This key aims to assist diagnosticians and biosecurity related scientists in the front line identification of phytophagous (plant feeding) Scarab beetles from the subfamilies Cetoniinae, Dynastinae, Melolonthinae and Rutelinae. It encompasses a range of exotic pest species, some of which are highly invasive to new regions. The key also includes a number of commonly encountered native and introduced species in Australia.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/exotic-scarab-pests/

The Caterpillar Key

An interactive key for identifying families of Lepidoptera larvae, particularly those of Australian biosecurity concern. The objective of this Lucid Key for caterpillars is to provide a tool for the identification of caterpillars to family level, with a particular focus on families of biosecurity concern to northern Australia.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/the-caterpillar-key/

TingID

The USDA APHIS Identification Technology Program, working with the APHIS Otis Laboratory, Otis Massachusetts, have released a Lucid based tool that focuses on genera in the family Tingidae, known as lace bugs, specifically on the species within those genera that have been intercepted at U.S. ports. 

Available at: https://idtools.org/id/lacebugs/

Tropical Forages: an interactive selection tool

A major update of Tropical Forages: an interactive selection tool has been released. Tropical Forages was initially developed by an international team as a means of capturing the expertise of experienced, often retired, forage specialists from across the globe and presenting it in a structured way to guide a new generation of researchers, advisors, development specialists and conversant farmers to make informed choices of species and genotypes for particular environments and farming systems.

Available at: https://apps.lucidcentral.org/tropical_forages/

Key of the genus Chinavia Orian (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) 

This key to green stink bugs has been released by Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Departamento de Ecologia e Biologia Evolutiva.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/chinavia-orian/

Two new thrips keys: Thysanoptera Australiensis & Pest thrips in Timor Leste

Dr Laurence Mound, et al., has released Thysanoptera Australiensis a revised version of the older “Ozthrips” (Mound et al., 2012) and Pest thrips in Timor Leste. The keys within Thysanoptera Australiensis include all nine of the Families of living Thysanoptera worldwide, together with the 100 genera and 340 species in the five Families of the Sub-Order Terebrantia that are recorded from Australia. In addition, a list is provided of the 140 genera recorded from Australia in the two sub-Families of the sub-Order Tubulifera.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/thysanoptera-australiensis/

Pest thrips in Timor Leste - Timor-Leste is near the southern extremity of the biogeographical region known as Malesia that extends from Peninsular Malaysia in the north to New Guinea in the south (Mound 2019). Thrips include several major crop pests, and the objective here is to provide a system to facilitate identification of such pests and to distinguish them from the many species that are likely to live in Timor Leste.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/pest-thrips-in-timor-leste/

AusGrass and Families of Flowering Plants of Australia

The following, two popular keys that were only available on CD or USB have now been released free of charge on Lucidcentral.org, thanks to the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) and CSIRO.

AusGrass: Grasses of Australia

A key to the native and naturalised species of grass in Australia.

https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/ausgrass-grasses-of-australia/

Families of Flowering Plants of Australia

A key to all 240 plant families found in Australia.

https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/families-of-flowering-plants-of-australia/

While the content of these two keys have not yet been updated, they are still fantastic resources.

EUCLID Eucalypts of Australia – Fourth Edition

Minor updates of the app editions of Euclid have recently been incorporated to further improve the user interface. These updates would have come through the relevant app stores automatically for those users who have it installed.

It was amazing to see the Euclid app becoming the top selling reference app in both Google and Apple App stores for a couple of weeks after its release. A great result for the authors and contributors to this key.

Available at: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/euclid-eucalypts-of-australia-fourth-edition/

Snake ID 

This recently released app (Android and iOS editions) received an update to its content and interface. 

For more information about this key see: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/australian-snake-id/

Software updates

Download the latest updates via your Lucidcentral.org account at: https://www.lucidcentral.org/my-account

Lucid Builder v3.6 updates (free to existing licence holders)

Several updates have been added to the current Builder release.

3.6.36 20200722 (latest)

• minor interface tweaks for OSX
• Updates to the setup package

3.6.34 20200510

• Fixed builder bug when attaching urls that timeout.
• Fixed builder bug when scoring subsets on branches.

3.6.33 20200430

• Fixed builder bug attaching some https urls.
• Fixed builder copy + paste bug.
• Fixed builder and player bug opening certain url attachments.

Fact Sheet Fusion v2

Version 2.05.180 has been released (free to existing licence holders). This update includes:

New Features and Enhancements

• Added a new Entity Properties Report – This new report allows you to quickly review entity properties such as ‘Review’, ‘Excluded’, Crosslinking exclusions.
• Added a new Entity Topics Report – This new report allows you to quickly assess which topics have text for each of the entities. It also indicates if the entity has alternative names associated with it.
• Added a new Glossary Terms Report – The Terms Report will report on all the terms for the selected Glossary Set. The report will cover the term properties such as ‘Review’, ‘Exclude’ and ‘Alias Of’ etc. It will also give a media attachment count for each term.
• Content importer – will now check and add, if needed, wrapping P tags around matched content when importing data into the project.
• Glossary Aliases – Glossary terms marked as an alias of another term can now be excluded from the Glossary term listing by leaving the term definition empty. Otherwise if you wish the alias term to be included you can simply add definition text.
• Updated the help.

Fixes

• Fixed a small bug in the Content Importer Rule loader where the topic name label matching was case sensitive.
• Fixed several crosslinker issues.
• Fixed the Glossary properties width layout splitter which was disabled under certain circumstances.
• Updated the Fancy Green Template to support glossary term pop-up option and other minor CSS fixes.

Version 2.05.165. This update included:

• Token parsing for the media list export.
• A new report that check for differences between entities and the scientific name topic. Useful if you have used the ‘Automatic create scientific names topic’ option.
• Added copy detection from Windows Explorer within the Media Manager to allow pasting of copied media, in addition to the drag and drop from Windows Explorer.
• Added additional export path checks and warnings prior to the export occurring in case changes have taken place since a previous export.
• Integration of new registration and activation service.
• Minor fixes and interface improvements.