Why is there a discrepancy between the locality and county maps?
The concept of keeping county record maps for Missouri herps originated with Tom Johnson, state herpetologist for many years and the author of The Amphibians and Reptiles of Missouri, the first comprehensive field guide for all Missouri herps. His maps were “county dot maps”, where a species is represented in a county with a single dot, regardless of the number of occurrences in that county. For several reasons, we were not satisfied with the resolution of county dot maps and chose to publish locality maps instead. However, the influence that Johnson’s publications have had on the state cannot be ignored and we chose to include his county dot records even if we could not find the original museum records on which they were based. Thus, we have a category in the county maps (i.e., open circles) that represent Johnson’s county records for which we cannot find a valid museum or published specimen. The locality maps do not include these records.
