New Website: Robber Flies of the World

Today is World Robber Fly Day, and I can't think of a better time to announce the launch of my new website, Robber Flies of the World: https://www.robberfliesoftheworld.com.

As the name suggests, it covers all 7,200+ known species of these venomous predators, and focuses on their taxonomy, natural history and identification. My hope is that in the future it will become the go-to reference for just about anything pertaining to robber flies.

This has been a passion project of mine over the past 6 years or so. Because I decided to build it from the ground up, I've had to learn how to write and use HTML5, PHP, CSS, Javascript, and MySQL. While this means that I have had full control over the appearance and functionality of the site, it also means that there may be some uncaught bugs or glitches. I will continue to tweak and improve the site's appearance and performance over time, so let me know if you encounter any issues!

Robber Flies of the World currently has three main features:

• Taxon Pages: Browse through every accepted subfamily, tribe, genus, and species. Over time each taxon page will be updated with diagnostic photographs and information pertaining to it's identification and natural history.
• Species Catalog: Search by subfamily, tribe, genus, zoogeographic region, country and state to generate a catalog of species that match those criteria. Only accepted taxa are included, with junior synonyms listed for the relevant taxa.
• Taxon Database: Search for a subfamily, tribe, genus, or species from a database of every known name used in Asilidae (over 12,00 records).

These are all generated from a MySQL database, which will allow me to quickly and easily modify classifications or add taxa as new taxonomic and phylogenetic studies are published.

The next big feature to be added to the website is the literature database, which will be incorporated into the taxon pages, species catalog, and taxon database as well as have a dedicated query page. Other major planned features include a predator-prey database, dichotomous keys, and matrix-based keys.

I hope you will find Robber Flies of the World to be a useful addition to your toolkit, and I look forward to your feedback!

If you want to get involved in the holiday festivities, consider posting your robber fly photos to Twitter with the hashtag #WorldRobberFlyDay ( https://twitter.com/search?q=%23WorldRobberFlyDay).

Posted on 30 de abril de 2020, 02:10 PM by myelaphus