[Ed.] Notice, however, that with
the introduction of Hawaii into the picture in 2007, the visual
geographic scale shift required to portray both Hawaii and the former
Soviet Union on
the same map is stretched to the limit. Shading of the Hawaiian
Islands is not visible. One solution is simply to insert a
visible word over the location of the islands (as above), interrupting
the visual animation pattern (as in Figure 1). Another solution
is to offer yet another inset map which might be distracting and
cluttering. A third possibility is to recast the two dimensional
animation as a three dimensional interactive model. Thus,
Sammataro's data is recast in Google Eart
h®.
To view it, first
download a current version of
the free Google Eart
h®
and put it on your
computer's desktop. Then, open the following file in Google
Eart
h®:
varroa.kmz . Screen captures from a
couple of view of this
model are shown in Figure 2 below (to get the full effect, however, the
reader must load the .kmz file,
varroa.kmz ,
in Google Eart
h®).
Placemarks, as red balloons on sticks, mark the spatial/temporal
appearance of a varroa recording. One drawback to this form of
display is that the reader can see at most half the globe at
once. The merit, however, of being able to control the globe, in
orientation, scale, and other factors, generally outweights this
single universal drawback to this sort of display and indeed this merit
helps to overcome that drawback. Also, consider taking "tour" of
the placemarks in Google Eart
h®:
pull down "Tools" and then choose "Play Tour" (track the place names on
the left side of the screen). To see the pattern in a single year
(of more than one entry) or in a subset of years, click off all the
other years individually (on the left side of the display). Or, make
changes in the color, shape, height, opacity, or other cosmetic
features of the placemarks; simple changes can emphasize differences in
pattern. In
the future, look
to see further refinement of this data display, and of the content
(added text, GPS coordinates of sightings, and so forth), that has now
become
possible by zooming in and out on the user-controlled globe!