27-03-2020

For many of us, these are the strangest and most disorientating times we have known. For those of us working from home, it's hard to settle to anything meaningful.  For those who aren't able to work from home, there's only so much spring cleaning you can do!  Whether you're trying to occupy the children's time, or looking for something satisfying that you can do, we hope that MammalWeb offers some potential.  Our growing range of projects should offer something for everyone - and any time spent on MammalWeb brings the added satisfaction that you are helping to build a vital database of where mammals of different species occur, how they spend their time, and what aspects of the environment affect both of those.  In addition, we are aiming to launch a competition for those who participate in spotting during the lockdown.  Watch our social media channels for more on that in due course!

We are always seeking additional help to increase camera trapping coverage and to increase the rate at which we gain classifications of submitted data.  For that reason, we have created a "quick start" guide to using MammalWeb.  Feel free to share it with family and friends who might be looking for satisfying ways to spend their time!  The quick start guide is here.

For now, we hope you are keeping safe and healthy, and that this bizarre and worrisome period will soon be over - maybe even leaving behind a new perspective on how we work, what we value, and how we balance our time between work and home.

Image credit: Roland Ascroft

16-03-2020

We are very excited to introduce a new project for you all. Sian, one of our MammalWeb PhD students, has been running a camera trap survey in the Forest of Dean and is now looking for help to classify the thousands of photos and videos collected. This project adds new data to MammalWeb from a part of the UK less well represented in the dataset so far.

This survey, over a period of 5 months, has involved rotating cameras across 75 locations in a systematic grid formation across the forest. The survey area spans three different counties: Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in England, and Monmouthshire in Wales. The aims of this project are to provide a systematic assessment of the wildlife living in the Forest of Dean and assist with monitoring the newly introduced pine martens, as well as some testing of different camera trap methodologies.

The forest is home to an interesting array of wildlife so should make for interesting spotting, with species such as wild boar, muntjac and fallow deer. There has even been a recent re-introduction of pine martens to the forest in a collaborative effort between the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and Forestry Commission. While the pine martens are at a low density and are quite elusive, if you are very lucky you may come across one! There are two projects for the Forest of Dean survey, one containing photos and the other containing videos. They are equally in need of classifications.

Have a go at spotting for the Forest of Dean projects to have a chance of catching fallow deer like this one, wild boar, or even the elusive pine martens!

17-02-2020

We are very excited to tell you about the new module on the MammalWeb platform that will enable you to view MammalWeb data from different locations and focussing on different species. By clicking "Discover" in the MammalWeb menu bar, you can search for data on a particular species by selecting it from the drop-down list on the right. This will provide information on the total number of records for this species each year as well as the number of records from different locations on the map.

You can also search for records based on grid cell by selecting this option from the top left of the screen and then selecting the grid cell you are interested in. This will then display the number of image sequences uploaded and classified in that grid cell, as well as showing the most common species recorded from that location. You can take a broad view, or zoom in to a particular area. Aggregated records can be viewed to a resolution of 0.1° of latitude by 0.2° of longitude. That is a resolution of about 70km2, ensuring that you can investigate the records in detail without revealing the exact locations of individual camera traps or of sensitive species. We hope that this will help you to see how all your efforts fit into the bigger picture of European mammal records. Have fun exploring!

28-08-2019

At MammalWeb, we are interested in understanding more about how social media could be used to help people engage with our project, and how we could improve our pages. Therefore we are planning on doing some research, and would like to make people aware of this. We will be monitoring our social media pages and anonymised data may be analysed in order to understand how people engage with posts. No individuals, accounts or user names will be identified for research purposes. Examples of the data we are interested in include overall number of likes or shares a post receives. We will not be looking at individual responses.  

Overall, we aim to use our social media pages to provide educational materials, relevant news and project updates as well as to encourage discussion and communication between participants. We hope this research will help us improve our pages and engage with more people!

We are happy to answer any questions or concerns, for more information, please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

04-08-2019

To make it easier to create sites, Helen has created a "wizard" that will guide you through the process of setting up a new site.  The information is the same (although look out for a couple of extra questions about the use of bait and the time during which the camera was active; these aren't compulsory, as you can just accept the defaults) but it should be much easier to enter than previously.  See below for an example of the data entry interface.

We hope this is helpful but, as always, let us know (by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) if you spot a problem or have changes to suggest.