Wild Things of Greater Melbourne

Wild Things of Greater Melbourne is an easy-to-use guide to the plants, animals and vegetation of the Greater Melbourne Area. It contains descriptions and identification aids to virtually all the vascular plants, mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs that live in the wild in the area. It also includes maps, descriptions and photographs of all of its Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs).

All records in the databases have been summarised in a grid system with individual grid cells of dimensions 1 minute longitude x 1 minute latitude, which, in the Melbourne area, translates to grids which are 1.5 x 1.8 km (an area of about 2.7 km²). There are about 5500 of these grids that cover the area and there are more than 229,000 records in the current botanical database and 115,000 in the animal database (an increase of more than 30,000 records since the previous edition).

Wild Things of Greater Melbourne has been developed to provide professional and amateur biologists with access to encyclopaedic information about the region's plants, animals and vegetation in conjunction with detailed distribution data on 1:250,000 and 1:100,000 scale maps. The resolution of the data is commensurate with that of our front line databases, the Victorian Flora Information System (FIS) and the Victorian Fauna Database (VFD), while the software maintains the simplicity and ease of use of Wild Plants of Victoria (WPV) and Wild Animals of Victoria (WAV).

There are four basic functions for Wild Things of Greater Melbourne for which the software and database structures are optimised.

Looking up an animal or plant species [More]
The packages show, at a glance, the names, classification and conservation status of all 2420 vascular plant species and 555 mammal, bird, reptile and frog species recorded for Greater Melbourne. Each species has a plain English description and most are represented by one or more colour photographs. You can find the names by typing in an abbreviation (e.g. Euc obl for Eucalyptus obliqua, Gr fan for Grey Fantail) or an old name (e.g. entering Helichrysum dendroideum will find the new name Ozothamnus ferrugineus, entering Blue Wren will find the current name Superb Fairy-wren) and even the odd misspelling will be catered for. Names can be viewed in alphabetic order of common or scientific name.

Find the distribution of any species [More]
Once you have found the species you are looking for you may, with a single mouse-click, plot its distribution any of:
•   A series of 1:250,000 maps showing different themes, such as, date of information, number of records for each species, land use, topography, climate etc [More].
•   1:100,000 map tiles each showing public and private land, parks and reserves, roads, rivers, lakes, towns, etc [More].
•   1:100,000 map tiles each showing Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) roads, rivers, lakes, towns, public land, parks and reserves etc [More]

Each of these maps can be printed or exported as Windows Metafiles for use in word documents or other desktop publication packages.

Finding all animal or plant species for any area [More]
You may load any of the above maps or map tiles and, using simple point-and-click methods, determine an area on that map to search. Once the area has been defined a single mouse-click will find all the species recorded for that area and the date of the most recent record. The resulting list can then be printed, exported or queried further. There is even an on-line place name index to help you find the map tile you need.

Finding descriptions, maps and photographs of EVCs [More]
You may use the EVC lookup option to find any of the 60 Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) in the region and view a written description of each, one or more photographs and a regional distribution map. The descriptions and photographs are also accessible from the interactive EVC map tiles.