About range maps

The range maps associated with the species entries are automaticly generated from the textual region information. When interpreting the maps, one should keep the following points in mind:

• Always check the textual range information before making any decisions based on the map.
• Note: when the species includes subspecies or forms with their own range information, the map is generated only once for the full combination of those ranges, BUT the text under the map only is only that of the main entry.
• the region does not always contain the full global range the species, for example it may only contain distribution within Europe or West Palearctic region. The covered area should be indicated at right end of the top navigation area.
• the detail of the region information varies greatly depending on when I entered the data and what sources I had. Especially be extra cautious when the textual information lists all upper case symbols, such as EU, NA, AF, SA, etc. In such cases it often only indicates that the species does occur somehwere within such area.
• the map is built by combining pieces of areas based on the location names. This often results somewhat strange looking, bumpy or convoluted maps.

If anyone is actually interested about the rules of translating the textual descriptions into maps, the description file is mapping.lst. The actual code interpreting this is written in perl and is part of the index.pl script.