We hope everyone is well and keeping safe in this time of COVID-19. As for the Lucid team, we are all currently safe and working from home offices. We will continue to support our customers and users.

In the last month or so we’ve been pleased to see an increase in identification key development. We assume this is due to activity that is being undertaken at home due to restrictions on social activity. If this presents any problems we can help with, please let us know (e.g. activation resets or the second licence offer below).

Since the start of the year we’ve been busy on software updates and key releases. Recent examples include the following:

• The fourth edition of EUCLID “Eucalypts of Australia”, an amazing resource for anyone who has an interest in this diverse group of trees. (see below for more information)
• Fact Sheet Fusion, our fact sheet creation tool, continues to grow with more refinements and new features. The latest update was released only a few days ago.
• An update to Snake ID will be released soon and,
• Another major key ‘Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants’ reached another milestone with Edition 7. It will be released on the Lucid Mobile platform for the first time soon. More on this and other keys below in the Key news section.

Stay safe and thank you for your continued support during this difficult time.

Regards,

The Lucid team

Key Updates

The release of EUCLID, Wattles of Australia and Snake ID, and many other Lucid Mobile apps will no doubt continue to make an important contribution to biodiversity and conservation research and management. In providing scientists and practitioners with powerful identification tools that do not require online connection, they can be used for field work, wherever they might be. The ready availability of these keys as apps is also likely to encourage the increasing involvement of the public in Citizen Science projects as well as provide useful tools for a whole range of educational activities.

March 23rd in Australia is officially Eucalyptus Day. This year, to mark the occasion, the 4th edition of EUCLID - the Lucid key to Eucalypts of Australia - was released, both as an online version and, for the first time, as Android and Apple apps. This 4th edition is the result of over 20 years collaboration, involving botanists at CSIRO and the National Herbarium in Canberra, who have been supported by the Lucid team since the first EUCLID key was first published in 1996 as a CD-ROM product.

EUCLID 4th edition now covers 934 Eucalypt species found throughout Australia and will be relevant not only to botanists, ecologists and to the general community throughout Australia but will also be relevant for those in other countries where many species of Eucalyptus have been introduced. For further information about EUCLID – there is a published media release and an ABC radio interview with Anthony Whalen, Director of Biodiversity Science, Parks Australia.

The release of the fourth edition of EUCLID (Eucalypts of Australia) is another example, like “Wattles of Australia”, released last year, of a long-term taxonomy project resulting in the release of a series of Lucid keys and finally of Lucid Mobile apps.

The Snake ID app, another iconic identification key of importance to conservation and biodiversity in Australia, has also been released this year. The key, consisting of 221 species, is authored by Hal Cogger (Australian Museum), Australia’s pre-eminent herpetologist.  Hal is currently busy preparing another update to Snake ID, which contains the latest taxonomy and will include more images and minor corrections. We hope this update will be available in the next few weeks for those who have already downloaded the app.

The 7th Edition of the key has now been released and is available free online. This key has almost reached three thousand taxa and includes an incredible amount of information and thousands of images of Australian rainforest plants. The next step is to release this key on the Lucid Mobile platform. Work on this should start in the next few weeks, assuming no major delays caused by COVID-19.

This identification tool has been developed to support those concerned with reducing the loss of valuable native pollinators in the US through early detection of possible invasive species. It focuses on bee families and genera that include non-native bee species that have already been introduced, or have the high potential to invade, the U.S. Exotic Bee ID is aimed primarily to help individuals working at ports of entry, state departments of agriculture, university extension services, and non-experts with an interest in learning features that are important in the identification of native and non-native bees.

Betty Wood, the author of Plants of South-East New South Wales, has released another update for the web and mobile app edition of this key. As one of the largest keys (almost three thousand taxa) that we have been supporting, Betty is a testament to what can be achieved by a dedicated individual.

Software Updates

Version 2.0.5.155 has just been released and is now freely available to existing licence holders via the update option found under the Help menu. Otherwise, download the latest edition via your Lucidcentral.org account (My Account – downloads section).

If you haven’t thought about fact sheets and media for your key yet, you should definitely consider Fact Sheet Fusion. Try it out for free. It will speed up this large part of your key development. Almost every major key released has used Fact Sheet Fusion, especially those using the Lucid Mobile platform. Without a tool like FSF, managing fact sheet data and multimedia can be frustrating and time-consuming task and was one of the major reasons that FSF was developed - for own involvement in managing key development projects.

The Lucid Builder and its setup package have been recently updated to fix minor issues and to keep pace with Java Runtime Environment changes.

This update is free for existing licence holders via Lucidcentral.org, My Account – Downloads.

Lucid Secondary Licence offer

For those who are now forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic we are offering 40% off a secondary Lucid licence for the next month.

To take up this offer use the promo code “2NDLUCID” in the lucidcentral.org/shop when purchasing the Secondary Lucid licence.

Note: You need a primary licence before a secondary licence can be added. Primary licences are limited to one secondary licence.

Java Note

Oracle, the owner of Java, have been making licensing changes which can impact business and government users. Luckily there is an Open Source alternative call OpenJDK, which Lucid fully supports.

Get the latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE) free from https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html?variant=openjdk14&jvmVariant=hotspot
Of course, if you are not affected by the Oracle licence changes you can still obtain the JRE from https://www.java.com.
 
 
Finally, please stay safe wherever you are – we hope that your and our activities will return to normal before too long.