UMSP Trichoptera Biota© database

General Tips

Navigation - Once you enter the Biota database, you must not use your browser’s navigation controls, but must instead stay within the Biota form, using the buttons provided. The program functions similarly to an online “shopping cart”, where once you click outside the window, it may de-authenticate your session. In Biota, if you hit “Return”, or use your browser’s “Back” or “Forward” button, you may be kicked out of Biota and get an error message. The only way to return to the beginning search page is to hit “cancel” or “done”, which will take you back page by page. If you have already created a record set (a list of species, specimens, etc.), you must hit “Done” to save it as a record set. Clicking “Done” will take you back to the previous page.

Search Strategies

Find Lower Taxa for Higher Taxon - This method is probably the most useful for finding a list of species for a genus, or a list of genera for a particular family, eg. To use this search option, you must know the correct spelling of the higher taxon.

Find All Families - If you are unsure of the correct spelling of a family, this search is your best option. Clicking on this link will give you a list of all Trichoptera famililes databased at UMSP. You can then click on the green dot next to an individual family to display a list of all genera in that family. After choosing a genus from the list, you make continue to narrow your search to find species and specimens.

Find All Genera, or Find All Species - These search options will give a list of all genera or species databased in alphabetical order by genus. These options are generally not recommended as because the lists created are quite long, take a lot time to load, and are generally too cumbersome to work with.

Find Specimens for a Species - This search is useful If you already know what species you are interested in and want to see the specimen records for that species.

Find Using the Query Editor - The Query Editor is a general search tool available for finding records in a particular table based on content of fields from that table or from the content of fields in linked records of other tables. This tool is only recommended for advanced users of the database. For an example of its use, go to the example page of this tutorial.

Other Commands

Record Sets - You can command Biota to "remember" a selection of records from a particular table by establishing a record set. Each time you click "Done" on a particular list of records, those records are saved as a record set. You can then display those records by clicking on the appropriate record set from the main search page. For some searches, eg. "Find Species or Specimens for a Locality or Collection", you need to create a record set using the query editor or another tool before you begin your search.

Exporting data - At present, the online version of Biota does not have the capability to export data by any other method then by simply "copying & pasting" the data from the screen to a word processing programming. There may be an option to export tab-delimited text files in future Biota versions.

General tips
Structure of the database
Definitions and codes
Tables and fields
Troubleshooting
Examples

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Access UMSP Trichoptera database