Visualizing biodiversity data with web applications

The advent of the Internet along with various web-based tools and open source software has allowed more people to readily create customized web applications, often for the purposes of presenting or visualizing data in a more accessible or exploratory manner.   The presentation of faunal surveys through online and interactive mapping tools may generate new insights, ultimately leading to better-informed decisions about how best to manage these species and their habitats.  In this poster, the survey of Wisconsin’s primitive weevils serves as a case study to illustrate the potential ways survey data can be organized, visualized and presented.  Examples include the Weevil Viewer, an interactive mapping application that displays the phenological and geographical distributions of the beetles; an interactive map along with a parallel coordinate plot that displays the number of species in each family found in each county; and a hierarchical edge bundling visualization that displays plant-insect associations, among others.