Unified Butterfly Recorder

Unified Butterfly Recorder (UBR) is a Progressive Web Application data collection tool. UBR provides butterfly researchers and enthusiasts with a quick and efficient app to use in the field to efficiently record butterfly sighting data. UBR works alongside various survey protocols traditionally used by researchers and citizen scientists.

UBR was originally designed, built, and maintained by various groups of computer engineering and software engineering seniors as part of a senior design class at Iowa State University in collaboration with the Entomology staff at Reiman Gardens in Ames, Iowa. During the Fall semester of 2022, UBR was rearchitected by a new group of senior design students to be cross-platform- one application for both major platforms, Andriod and iOS.

The new UBR will be accessible from any major web browser with an internet connection and can be downloaded to mobile devices like any other application.

UBR collects user-entered butterfly sighting data and other helpful information such as weather, location, speed, and time. UBR comes standard with global/regional butterfly species lists, and users can build custom lists to track other things like trees, bees, or anything else.