Notes
Websites (A): Today the most common way of obtaining a good image of a species is to “Google” its scientific name. Caution is warned for those who are new at this--as there are many false leads and incorrectly identified images--but generally the results are good, particularly if the image is hosted at an authoritative website.
Images and sometimes life history descriptions of Marianas Archipelago biodiversity are available at a number of websites. Some contain dichotomous keys to “key out” an organism. Active websites we are aware of, in addition to our posted “Island Ecology and Resource Management: Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas” textbook (link), are listed below (A).
Field Guides (B): Ecologists often acquire and use as many field guides as they can obtain concerning specific study areas. Several outstanding field guides are still in print for our region and listed below. Those which are out of print are sometimes put on the web, at other times are available via diligent search requests at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, or other such sites (B).
Life Form Monograph Sheets (C): Several government agencies actively publish life form information sheets from which you may request (C).
APASEEM-Contributed Biodiversity Images (D): Several APASEEM members/presenters have contributed life form images to the organization, each of whom wishes to share their pictures and identifications for the advancement of community knowledge in science and environmental management (D).
APASEEM-Contributed People & the Marianas Environment Images (E): Likewise as APASEEM members are involved in activities, best images captured are also shared on this site (E).
Finally a note is added at the end on adding identified images to our site (F).
Acknowledgement for people (G).
(A). Recommended Life Form Identification Websites.
Archipelago Plants:
Seaweeds of Hawaii, Magruder and Hunt.
http://coralreefnetwork.com/marlife/stepath/Default.htm
Marine Macro and Micro Algae, Lobban.
http://university.uog.edu/botany/474/marine_toc.htm
Key to Micronesian Algae (Provisional), Lobban.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2573455/
Plants of Guam, Moore and McMakin.
http://university.uog.edu/cals/people/pog/poghome.html
Freshwater Algae of Micronesia, particularly Guam, Lobban.
http://university.uog.edu/botany/474/fw_toc.htm
Cycads of Guam
http://www.wptrc.org/photogal.asp
Agriculture Guides
http://www.uog.edu/dynamicdata/ANRagguides.aspx?siteid=2&p=1198
Traditional Crops
http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/scitech/agnic/
Archipelago Animals:
General Reef Life
http://www.guamreeflife.com/htm/images.htm
http://www.guamreeflife.com: promoting awareness of Guam's marine biodiversity through access to thousands of underwater images.
http://dburdick.smugmug.com: underwater images from Guam and beyond.
Reef Invertebrate Identifications from Micronesica Marine Biodiversity Volumes.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/reefs/guamimg/index.htm
General Animal Life on Guam and Northern Mariana Islands
http://www.guamdawr.org/learningcenter/factsheets/
Corals
http://www.guammarinelab.com/coral/title.html
Fishbase
Fishes of Guam
http://www.guammarinelab.com/fish/thefishes.html
Fact Sheets on Land Snails
http://www.guamdawr.org/learningcenter/factsheets/inverts/landsnails_html
Insects of Guam
http://guaminsects.myspecies.info/
Butterflies of Micronesia, Schreiner and Nafus.
http://guaminsects.myspecies.info/sites/guaminsects.myspecies.info/files/ButterfliesOfMicronesia.pdf
Ants of Micronesia
http://www.antweb.org/micronesia.jsp
Ants of the Northern Mariana Islands
http://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands
Insect Fact Sheets
http://www.guaminsects.net/uogces/kbwiki/index.php?title=Fact_sheets
Invertebrates
INVERTEBRATES RECORDED FROM THE NORTHERN MARIANAS ISLANDS - STATUS 2002 by O. BOURQUIN, CONSULTANT
Click link for the 02 April 2013, edited version, a 365 page, 1.33 MB Word Document.
Ed (JFF) notes. A little over ten years ago Dr. Bourquin individually accomplished this incredible 365 page cataloging of the CNMI insects--later to be expanded to include all CNMI terrestrial invertebrates--collection being conserved on the NMC campus, Saipan. Dr. Bourquin hoped the catalog would be published, however, this has not yet occurred (April 2013). As a backup, Dr. Bourquin provided certain individuals with digital and hard copy versions of his work, JFF being amongst these. APASEEM was established after Dr. Bourquin moved to Montana State on the US mainland. As part of our website's Local Organism Identification goals, with Orty's permission, APASEEM is pleased to make this important (minimally-edited) catalog available.
Posted April 17, 2013
Fact Sheets on Reptiles
http://www.guamdawr.org/learningcenter/factsheets/herps/
Reptiles, more information
http://www.fort.usgs.gov/resources/education/bts/impacts/herps.asp
Birds of the Northern Mariana Islands:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_the_Northern_Mariana_Islands
Birds and Avifauna issies in Micronesia:
Posted May 16, 2013
Birds of the world including the CNMI:
Birdlife is a good website to confirm bird identification with photos and for information about individual species.
Posted May 16, 2013
Fact Sheets on Birds:.
http://www.guamdawr.org/learningcenter/factsheets/birds/
Download Christmas Birdcount Checklist as Word document:
Northern Mariana Islands Christmas Bird Count Database Master Checklist, 2012
Avibase - the world bird database - Use this link for a Saipan, Tinian and Aguijan Bird Checklist: The world database can also be found via this link.
http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?lang=EN&list=howardmoore&synlang=®ion=MP02&version=images
Posted May 8, 2013
xeno-canto - Bird sounds from around the world.
Posted May 9, 2013
Fact Sheets on Mammals.
http://www.guamdawr.org/learningcenter/factsheets/mammals/
Other Recommended:
Tide Charts
http://www.guammarinelab.com/tidecharts.html
PEOPLE Project (multi-topic resource from College Agriculture Program- Ref. Portable Extension Office For Program Literature Exchange).
http://university.uog.edu/cals/people/
(B). Recommended Field Guides understood to still be in print or worth conducting a diligent search for.
Archipelago Fungi:
An Identification Guide: Mushrooms of Hawai'i, Hemmes and Desjardin.
Archipelago Plants:
South Pacific Reef Plants; A Divers’ Guide to the Plant Life of South Pacific Coral Reefs. Littler & Littler.
Ferns and Orchids of the Mariana Islands, Raulerson and Rinehart.
Trees and Shrubs of the Northern Mariana Islands, Raulerson and Rinehart.
Common Flora and Fauna of the Mariana Islands, Vogt and Williams.
Archipelago Animals:
Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide. Allen & Steene.
Tropical Pacific Invertebrates; A Field Guide to the Marine Invertebrates Occurring onf Tropical Pacific Coral Reefs, SeaGrass Beds, and Mangroves. Colin and Arneson.
Micronesian Reef Fishes: A Comprehensive Guide to the Coral Reef Fishes of Micronesia, Myers.
A Field Guide to the Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific, Pratt, Bruner, and Berrett.
Common Flora and Fauna of the Mariana Islands, Vogt and Williams.
Other Recommended:
Field Guide to Caves and Karst of Guam, Taborosi. Note: While not a field guide for life forms, it is a great local field guide for limestone geology of our area.
Peterson First Guide to Clouds and Weather, Day & Schaefer. An excellent small guide to physical aspects of our atmosphere.
(C). Recommended Life Form Sheet images and contact information.
CNMI Division of Fish and Wildlife, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota Offices.
Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources, Guam.
(D). Marianas Archipelago Biodiversity-identifying Contributed Images.
See Section in menu above on Archipelago Plants.
See Section in menu above on Archipelago Animals.
(E). Images of People and the Marianas Archipelago Environment.
See Section in menu above on People and the Marianas Environment.
(F). To Add Images of Archipelago Organisms to this Site: To contribute images to our growing website, please send a short introductory note to our email account, apaseem@gmail.com for follow up correspondence in this regard. Please be sure to only send us images for which you have full rights to and for which you give permission to put into the public domain. Images of each identified organism should fill up the screen, need to be in JPEG format, and should be resized to approximately 300Kilobytes, our best estimate for good resolution on a 15 inch computer screen. Organisms not found in the Marianas Archipelago, general habitat pictures, and pictures of unidentified organisms are not being sought.
(G). Acknowledgement for People who have contributed images and/or made their earlier images publicly available for education purposes: Bourquin, Ortwin, Ph.D.; Burdick, Dave, M.Sc.; Donaldson, Terry, Ph.D.; Furey, John, M.Sc.; Goodwill, Roger, D.A.; Gourley, John, M.Sc.; Johnson, Steven, B.Sc.; Lobban, Christopher, Ph.D., Myers, Robert F, M.Sc.; Okano, Ryan, Ph.D.; Randall, John E, Ph.D.; Raulerson, Lynn, Ph.D.; Rinehart, Agnes F, B.Sc.; Rodda, Gordon H, Ph.D.; Vogt, Scott, M.Sc.; Wiles, Gary J., M.Sc.
(H). Please note that all images on this site are for education and nonprofit use only. No commercial purposes are allowed.
Last Updated 2/20/2014