The Virtual Museum Report summarizes the activities of the Animal Demography Unit's Virtual Museum in 2014. It notes that over 56,000 records were added in 2014, a 76% increase over 2013. This pushed the total records in the Virtual Museum database past the 1 million record milestone. Several citizen science projects like LepiMAP contributed large numbers of records. New projects in mushrooms, lacewings, and orchids also joined. A key publication was an atlas and red list of South African reptiles. Work is ongoing to red list mammals with a call for more mammal records.

1. Virtual Museum Report 2014
Les Underhill and Megan Loftie-Eaton – Animal Demography Unit
University of Cape Town

2. Knowing the ranges of species
and how they are changing is
key to proper biodiversity
conservation and can act as an
early warning system if a
species might be in trouble.

3. Is a species' range expanding
or contracting? If we don't
know this how can we make
proper decisions regarding
its conservation?

4. During 2014 we added 56787
records to the Virtual
Museum database. The total
for 2013 was 32249. That is a
76% increase!

5. During 2014 we quietly passed the
one million records milestone. The
total number of records in the Virtual
Museum database has grown to
1 029 368 records!! This includes
non-photographic records, bulk
uploads, and museum specimens, for
butterflies, frogs, reptiles and
mammals.

6. LepiMAP was the big
achiever with 21502 records
for 2014. Well done
LepiMAPpers!

7. Three new projects joined
the Virtual Museum family
this year: MushroomMAP,
LacewingMAP, and
OrchidMAP

8. The big publishing event of 2014 was the
Atlas and Red List of the Reptiles of South
Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. This book
was the culmination of the Southern African
Reptile Conservation Assessment (SABCA)
which has now become ReptileMAP

9. The Red Listing of Mammals is
underway! Please make a special
effort to submit your mammal
records to MammalMAP

10. The instructions for submitting records to the Virtual
Museum are available at
http://www.slideshare.net/meganloftieeaton/how-to-
submit-records-to-the-animal-demography-units-virtual-
museums-28710898