Select Region
Users can select any country in the Americas. States or provinces can further be selected for Canada, the United States, Mexico and Brazil. The pattern of internal navigation (different indices) will not change, but the content will reflect the user's selection. Once a region has been selected all indices will remain set to that choice until the user resets the regional selection. This is done by means of a "session cookie". This cookie contains only information about users' selections while at the site. No information on user or computer identity is saved or sent to any other computer or server. Unfortunatly, it is not possible at this time for users to mix and match localities and totally customize regional lists. This will eventually be added, but requires more complex programming. In the past 3 separate checklists have been listed on the main menu for: Canada and the U.S., the Southeastern U.S., and Mexico. These have been removed because they can be generated from selections on this page.
At present the default setting for geography is the entire Americas from Canada and Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Any other geographical subset must be set by the user and will remain in force for the session unless changed. NOTE!: Returning to the HOME page during a session typically resets the geographic selection to the default.
The information shown on this website is derived from a large database which is constantly being expanded, corrected, and maintained. For all intents and purposes the information on species from Canada, the continental U.S. and Mexico is complete. The database includes all published data on distribution, hosts, and synonymy for all native and exotic species for these countries. Complete information on distribution, hosts, and synonymy from outside the Americas is included for introduced species. Information for some Caribbean species is still incomplete.
Users should be aware that geographic entities used here do not strictly correspond to political reality. Specifically, Puerto Rico is treated as a country in the Caribbean (where it belongs giogeographically). Trinidad and Tobago and Curaçao are treated with South America rather than the other Caribbean islands because of their proximity to the mainland and geological history of connection. For my convenience, all of the Lesser Antilles, from the Virgin Island (U.S. and British) to Grenada and Barbados are treated as a geographical unit, ignoring politics.