MammalWeb

On MammalWeb, the default is for images to be attached to MammalWeb Britain. However, individuals, community groups or larger organisations might have reasons to want to view and manage their image data and classifications independently. This might be because their cameras are set up in a particular way, capturing different kinds of wildlife, or it might be because they want to enlist the help of a specific group of Spotters to help with classifications for a particular purpose. In addition, it might be desirable to have private collections of data, visible only to those who have been given access. In these cases, it makes sense for all image data collected for those purposes to be grouped as a separate Project on MammalWeb.

If data are grouped within their own project, Spotters can selectively classify only those data, whilst records of the uploaded data and associated classifications can be grouped together and exported separately from other data in the database.

The project structure on MammalWeb has implications for 3 activities: Spotting, Trapping, and Project administration.

Projects and Spotting

When spotting, you can choose between different projects for which you can contribute classifications. Specifically, the Spotter welcome screen has a set of buttons that allow you to select the set of images you would like to classify. That is highlighted in the picture below with a red ellipse. To learn how to be a Spotter and classify camera trap image data on MammalWeb, you can refer to our video about How to be a Spotter.

You can choose to classify any publicly-available images in the database (“Classify All”) or those from a specific collection within the overall database (in which case, you will need to select a project from the drop-down list, and choose “Classify selected project only”). Note that you can also follow the Projects link in the top menu bar to browse projects to which to contribute classifications. If you are also a Trapper and have already uploaded some images, you might like to “Classify my images only”. Note, however, that it usually takes 10 minutes or so before images you have uploaded are ready to be classified.

Projects and Trapping

Trappers are those who own or borrow camera traps to collect image data in their area. Each location at which a camera trap is deployed is known as a 'site'. More on this can be found in our video on How to be a Trapper. In brief, when a Trapper adds a new site, along with details such as the site name, location, camera type, etc., they are also asked to specify to which project(s) the site will belong. All sites, by default, are linked to MammalWeb Britain. However, you can change this at the relevant point in setting up your site (see picture, below) by selecting alternative projects to which to link your site. You can select more than one affiliation for your site by holding down CTRL (on a PC) or CMD (on a Mac) whilst you click to select the relevant projects.

Project administration

The MammalWeb team currently take care of basic project administration. We set up new projects, as required. Project administrators can then grant users access to those projects, if necessary. By default, all users are members of all public projects; however, some projects are restricted and require access to be set up. Users should contact us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if they would like to join a project to which they do not currently have access.

If you would like to set up a project on MammalWeb, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page and then get in touch.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Otherwise, thanks - and we hope this has been helpful!