OdonataMAP: Progress report on the Atlas of the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Africa: 2016/17 and 2017/18

This paper reports progress with OdonataMAP, the Atlas of Dragonflies and Damselflies of Africa, for the two-year period 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2018. During the two-year review period, the database for the project grew by 30,423 records to 52,257, starting from 22,809 records collected between 2010 and June 2016. Submissions were made from 25 African countries. In six of the nine provinces of South Africa, the number of OdonataMAP records for the province more than doubled. The provinces in which the number of records were not doubled were Gauteng (44% of records made during reporting period), Free State and North West (both 46%). Five observers contributed more than 1000 records over the two-year period, and a further 10 between 500 and 999 records. The total number of observers for the two-year period was 529, compared with 295 in the 2010–16 period. One of the important success of OdonataMAP during the review period was to increase the number of observers, and to reduce the project’s dependence on a small number of citizen scientists.