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Plant-SyNZ database update (September 2007)

The database was updated in August. There are now 6863 host-associations with 1517 plants and 2584 invertebrates. Update includes information from all volumes of the New Zealand Entomologist and more records of wood boring beetles. The New Zealand insect with most host plants is the long horn beetle, Oemona hirta, (lemon tree borer) with over 160 host plant species!

Plant-SyNZ™ database goes live
28 May 2007

The Plant-SyNZ database links New Zealand plants with their insect and mite herbivores. The database can be searched by plant or by herbivore name and produces reports that list the herbivores associated with a plant or the plants on which a herbivore lives. This information is of importance to people with interests in biodiversity, biosecurity, ecology and education.

The database, which was originally developed to keep track of information about leaf mining insects and gall forming insects and mites has been expanded to include all kinds of invertebrate herbivores and present contains the names of 1386 plant species, 2482 herbivore species and 6209 herbivore-host plant associations.

A possibly unique feature of the Plant-SyNZ database is the reliability index used to score each host association. The quality of information supporting a host association varies from excellent (insect reared on host plant) to poor (adults found sitting on host plant). Each association is given a score from 0 to 10, with 10 being excellent evidence and 0 a mistake in the literature. The reliability index also allows users to filter information above a minimum level of quality.

Another feature of the database is that it has a direct link to the plant databases hosted by Landcare Research and when it is available it will link directly to the invertebrate names database.

The project has been made possible thanks to two New Zealand Crown Research Institutes, Crop & Food Research and Landcare Research, with the support of the Terrestrial and Freshwater Biodiversity Fund (TFBIS) Programme. The TFBIS programme is funded by Government to help achieve the goals of the New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, and is administered by the Department of Conservation.

Feedback on Plant-SyNZ™ demonstration identification pages
July 2005
Many useful comments were received and these will be incorporated into the identification pages when the next version is printed. This is dependent upon finding a source funding and perhaps a sponsor. Please let me know of any suggestions.

TFBIS funding for an online herbivore-host plant database
July 2005
Within the next two years a joint project between Crop & Food Research and Landcare Research will make part of the herbivore-host plant database available on the internet. Users will be able to search by herbivore to give a list of its host plants or search by plant species to give a list of associated herbivores. The database will focus on native herbivores and native plants, but will also give the non-native associations for each native herbivore and plant species. The database will also be linked to two Landcare databases, one for plants and the other for insects and mites. It will be possible to start from either Landcare database, go to Plant-SyNZ™ and then to the other Landcare database.
Another feature of the Plant-SyNZ™ herbivore-host plant database on the internet is that it will indicate the quality of information supporting a particular host association, by using a reliability score of 0-10 (10 is high quality information supporting the association). Users will also be able to choose to see the reasons given for the score. Later this year trial formats for the results of searches of the database will be available for comment.

Plant-SyNZ™ pages go live 12 January 2004

 

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