/Cachalot

A project designed to engage the user with the movements of migratory animals utilizing APIs from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and Movebank.

Primary LanguageJavaScript

The Cachalot project

The Cachalot, or common cachalot, is a large toothed whale belonging to the infraorder Cetacea.

A project designed to engage the user with the movements of migratory animals utilizing GBIF | Global Biodiversity Information Facility and Movebank.

Get the frontend up and running

  1. Open a terminal, and run git clone https://github.com/katdob/Cachalot.git.

  2. Type cd Cachalot and press Enter (or Return).

  3. Run npm install.

  4. Once these packages are installed, run npm start.

  5. View http://localhost:8080/ in your browser.

Get the backend up and running

  1. Install Python3.7

  2. Open a new terminal tab and run python3.7 -m virtualenv venv

  3. Run export FLASK_APP=cachalot.py in the Cachalot directory

  4. Then, run source venv/bin/activate to activate the virtual environment.

  5. With (venv) to the left on your terminal line, run pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt. (And maybe grab a coffee, this could take a while!)

  6. cd backend go enter the backend directory (the Flask project)

  7. Run flask run

  8. Your backend will be available for api calls at http://localhost:5000/

Get some data!

Once you have the project up and running in your browser navigate to http://localhost:8080/ and create a new user. You can do this by selecting the Join Us button in the top right corner.

After creating a user you will be redirected to the form at http://localhost:8080/migrations/. The form suggests that the user enter the name of an animal species (a commonly used name, not a scientific name). Think something like "albatross" or "butterfly" or "tiger".

Once a name is entered the user may be prompted to select the more complete common animal name from a list provided by GBIF, along with a scientific name, also provided by GBIF.

The user is also prompted to enter a study id and individual id referencing a publicly available Movebank study. You can select to view 5 or 10 gps locations associated with each individual, and all individuals for the requested study will be available.

If you'd like to test the project without signing up for Movebank, you can try these study parameters:

Galapagos albatross

  • Animal Name: albatross
  • Common Name: waved albatross
  • Scientific Name: phoebastria irrorata
  • Study id: 2911040
  • Individual id: 4261-2228
  • Number of locations: 5 or 10
  • Sensor type: gps

Swainson's hawk (These hawks go to space!)

  • Animal Name: hawk
  • Common Name: swainson's hawk
  • Scientific Name: buteo swainsoni
  • Study id: 164144882
  • Individual id: 105921
  • Number of locations: 5 or 10
  • Sensor type: gps

Lions

  • Animal name: panthera
  • Common name: empty
  • Scientific Name: panthera leo
  • Study id: 220229
  • Individual id: Romeo
  • Number of locations: 5 or 10
  • Sensor type: gps

Strangely, GBIF does not return an entry for lion. The empty that you see in the Common name params above represents an empty input.

General info

This project was built using Python, Flask, React, and Material-UI. You can direct all questions and comments (and constructive criticism!) to Kat Dobbins.

Keep in mind that only publicly available studies are accessible via Movebank's api. The data accessible directly from Movebank is submitted by researchers and may not be complete.

Exciting news!

I'm a big fan of Movebank, and recently sent them an email requesting access to a taxon endpoint, should this endpoint exist. When they got back to me (less than 24 hours later) they said a brand new taxon endpoint has been added to Movebank. Unfortunately, this taxa endpoint is not currently available for JSON requests (as of 7/15/2019).

As of 2/15/2020, no updates are available. You can see all of the publicly available data here. I am done updating this project, as no further updates to the API area available.