BugwoodWiki is born!

We have just released a new addition the the Bugwood Network Family of sites: BugwoodWiki. The hope is that this will be a usefull tool for specialists to give information about various topics.

We also plan to make the content "portable"...If you want to take a page for use in a factsheet, you can grab the body of page (comlete with images and citations) and display it on your one site with your own header and footer.

Take a trip to the BugwoodWiki and give it a try. Please "pardon our dust" as this is still a work in progress. If you wish to submit content to the site, please contact Joe LaForest

New plant images from Czechia

Jan Samanek has sent us another great set of images. Many of the species he photographed are considered invasive species both in the United Stated and Czechia. You can view the latest images at this link.

New Images from Frank Peairs

We have just received a fine set of images from Frank Peairs at Colorado State University. These images cover a wide range of insects found in corn, rice, millet, wheat, and other grains. These images are available at the author page of Frank Peairs

Direct Searching of the Bugwood Image Database from Internet Explorer

While investigating the features of Internet Explorer 7, I found the tools that let you search any website from the tool bar on your browser. This is a pretty niffty feature since it can save a few steps in going to the page and finding the right place to enter a search.

For instance, to add a search of IPMImages.org, open IE7, click on the down arrow next to the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner, and select "Find More Providers...".

The box on the right gives you the option and instructions to create your own search link. Continuing the example of IPMImages, you would enter "http://www.ipmimages.org/search/action.cfm?q=TEST" into the blank for step 3 and "IPMImages.org" into the blank for step 4. After you press "Install", you are done! To choose a provider to search, select the same down arrow next to the magnifying glass and search box and choose "IPMImages". Any search you enter will go directly to our site

Changes to the image tags used in the Bugwood Network

We try very hard to make sure that the photographer and the organization they work for receive credit whenever an image is used. Although all of our image detail pages have the citation including the photographers name and organization, there has been some confusion as to the origin of the images based on the tag we apply to the lower right-hand corner of each image...it starts with the prefix 'UGA'

The 'UGA' was meant to denote that the image came from an image archive run by UGA…not that UGA was the source of the image. There were a few reasons that we started tagging images.

• We spend quite a bit of time putting together the image archive and would like people to know where to find the image and the information pertaining to it.
• Tagging each image provides a link to our image database and a way for people to easily find a particular image.

As of today, we have stopped using 'UGA' on our image tags. This will mainly apply to new images in the system. We are still tagging the images with a 7-digit number and searching by this number in our system or even on web searches like Google or Yahoo will return that particular image. Hopefully, the "black and white tag in the lower right" will act as a signal to most people that the image and it's information can be found in the Bugwood Image Database.

Updated South Carolina EPPC Invasive Plant List

South Carolina Exotic Pest Plant Council has released an update of their Invasive Plant List, available at:
http://www.se-eppc.org/southcarolina/SCEPPCList.pdf

Cogongrass Conference, Nov. 7-8, 2007

The purpose of this conference is to convey the latest understanding in restoring lands, managing, controlling and eradicating cogongrass, and to explore existing and needed networks for coordinating strategies for successful cogongrass management.

http://www.cogongrass.org/conference.cfm

Images added from the University of Georgia Plant Diagnostic Lab

We have begun to release images from the Plant Diagnostic Lab at the University of Georgia. These images were scanned from a slide archive focusing on Plant Pathology. Holly Thornton and Jan Fowler have been very helpful in double checking the images as we have entered them into the system. There are 545 currently available at this link. More will be added as we get them entered into the system

Emerald Ash Borer found in West Virginia

Many of you are aware of the little green menace that has been spreading from Michigan. The most recent reports are now from Fayette County in West Virginia! The discovery was made thanks to the trap trees used to provide early detection of this pest. You can read the full details of this story at this link.

You can view images of this pest in our EAB image gallery.

New images from Sturgis McKeever

Frank French has sent us another great set of images by Sturgis McKeever. This set includes some very nice images of spiders including black widows (Latrodectus mactans), brown widows (Latrodectus geometricus), brown recluse (Loxosceles reclusa). You can see this latest collection by clicking here.

New slides scanned from North Carolina State University

The Department of Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University has generously allowed us to scan some of their plant disease slides and add those images to the Bugwood Image Database. These images focus on diseases of field crops and bedding plants. Tom Creswell is helping us to check the images as they are released to the public. You can view this collection by following this link.

Bugwood enters the world of Flickr

We've recently added the Bugwood Network to the many users of Flickr. A endevour started by Yahoo, this popular photo sharing site has an insane amount of images from a very large membership. Many of the images are high-resolution and some are even of pests that we have been looking for images of.

In this spirit, we opened a group on labled Plant Health Images - Insect and Disease. We look at any of the images added to this group and select those that would be useful. We then contact the photographer and hopefuly get permission to add it to the image achive at Bugwood.

If you are a Flickr user and have an image that you think we may be interested in, please add it to the group. If you see an image on Flickr that would be useful, drop the author a note and ask them to send it to us.

Plants of Hawaii images added from Forest and Kim Starr

Recently, we were fortunate to find the work done by Forest and Kim Starr. They have been creating an image library of Hawaiian plants and animals. Over the past decade, they have complied over 45,000 image! They have graciously allowed us to add some of these image to the Bugwood Network image archive. While it will take us a while to sort through everything, you can see the first images at the following link:

http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/autimages.cfm?aut=41896

You can also find their site with all of the images and information at:http://www.hear.org/starr/index.html

Montage images from J.R. Baker & S.B. Bambara at North Carolina State University

We recently recieved an excellent set of images from J.R. Baker & S.B. Bambara at North Carolina State University. These images of Scolytines and Platypodid beetles were taken using a Montage imaging system. Many of the images focus on key identification features of these beetles. This set can be seen at:

http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/autimages.cfm?aut=41812

Images from the Esmat M. Hegazi at the University of Alexandria in Egypt

Many of you may be aware of our project to support the Southern Plant Diagnostic Network by finding images of current and potential pests. Since many of our pests are introduced from other countries, we have been looking abroad for people that may have some relevant images.

Esmat M. Hegazi at the University of Alexandria in Egypt has been very helpfull in helping us find some of the images we have been looking for. He has provided images of both Egyptian cottonworm (Spodoptera littoralis) and leopard moth (Zeuzera pyrina). You can see these on his author page at the following link:

http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/autimages.cfm?aut=41228

Rich Gillis contributes an image collection from Dow Gardens

We recently added over 1,100 images taken by Rich Gilis, the collections manager of Dow Gardens in Midland, Michigan. These images show a wide variety of plants in the gardens and many different cultivars of some popular ornamental plants.

All of his images can be found at:http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/autimages.cfm?aut=41244

New images from Johnny N. Dell

We recently received a nice set of images from Johnny N. Dell in Ware County, Georgia. These images include a wide range of arthropods commonly found in Georgia.

All of his images can be found at:http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/autimages.cfm?aut=31253

New publication - Invasive Plant Responses to Silvicultural Practices in the South

The new bugwood publication "Invasive Plant Responses to Silvicultural Practices in the South" is now available online at: http://www.invasive.org/silvicsforinvasives.pdf