Relevant websites and their interrelations

Singing Insects of North America [SINA]

The SINA website has been maintained by T. J. Walker on a University of Florida server since 2001. The site features checklists of the species of crickets (Gryllidea] and katydids (Hagloidea and Tettigonioidea) that occur in America north of Mexico. The two checklists were updated in 2017 to reflect the names and nomenclatural categories accepted by the Orthoptera Species File Online at that time. In 2019 SINA added this coverage of FSCA Ensifera.

Orthoptera Species File Online [OSFO]

This online resource, maintained by the Orthopterists’ Society (OS), is the source of the nomenclature used in organizing the FSCA Ensifera collection. Ensiferan taxonomic categories above the level of species are currently changing more than in the past, partly to accommodate the increasing understanding of ensiferan phylogeny. OSFO is designed to keep up with and record proposed changes.

The Orthopterists’ Society has agreed to keep online permanently the SINA version that TJW turns over to it when he ends his editorship. It has not committed to updating the content of that version but its OSF has the content needed to keep SINA’s nomenclature up to date and, unless TJW passes, SINA’s current Webmaster (Teresa Cooper) will be available at least through 2021 to make the changes that OS approves.

Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds [MLNS] and Walker Tape Library [WTL]

In 2002, TJW negotiated with Cornell University’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sound to digitize and archive most of the recordings in the Walker Tape Library. By 2007, 14 batches of tapes had been sent to MLNS and ca. 6460 cuts had been digitized, cataloged, and archived. By 2013, MLNS had made all cuts easily available online.

Instructions for accessing MLNS offerings of WTL cuts online are here.

Institutional Repository of the University of Florida [IR@UF)

In 2013-2014, the Institutional Repository of the University of Florida (IR@UF) posted online the field notes made by T. J. Walker during field work for SINA and during his studies of Caribbean Ensifera. The update of SINA will include instructions on how to access North American field notes kept on 1880 5x8-inch cards and in two record books and those for the Caribbean studies kept in six record books.

IR@UF also archived my bibliography, in the form of a chronological list of my research publications, with most entries being linked to a PDF file of the item. Each entry is tagged to its right with one or more numbers that indicate its subject matter—e.g. with a 1=crickets and katydids, and 2= Caribbean studies.

Note: The archiving of TJW’s materials by IR@UF was started with an outline that proved overly ambitious for the time and resources then available. The parts described above fit into a “Thomas J Walker Collection,” but the first and last of the major parts of this Collection are still empty.

Return to menu of SINA's section on Specimens and Songs of FSCA Ensifera.