Biodiversity Challenge

Posted by Graeme Lyons , Saturday, 29 August 2026 11:48


Are you doing  a degree in biology, zoology, marine biology, ecology & conservation or something similar? Then Biodiversity Challenge might be for you.

Imagine two students, one has a first class degree in ecology and conservation, the other has the same but leaves university with the ability to identify 2,851 species. Which one is likely more employable in a conservation ecology role? Biodiversity Challenge is about setting yourself an achievable target (say something like 1,000, 2,000 or even 3,000 species beyond where you are starting from - you set your target) and using the Pan-species Listing approach to British natural history to reach that target by the end of your time at your university. It's that simple. 

You should aim to do it at a rate where you can assimilate the knowledge as you go, if you rush through it using AI on most things, you're only going to cheat yourself and is missing the point. The idea is to use the PSL website and all that free time during your degree to build a sound knowledge base of British natural history that you can then put on your CV. I wish I had been able to do pan-species listing at university. We live in a golden age of natural history, it's never been easier to identify things than it is now due to all of the amazing field guides and keys being published, along with all the online resources and Facebook groups that connect us all together.

Here's how to get involved:

1). Sign up to the free Pan-species Listing website here www.panspecieslisting.com. Set up your life list using the PSL location of: "Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man and Channel Islands (PSL)", you won't be able to take part in Biodiversity Challenge if you don't set this as the location for your life list.

2). Tick off any species you have already seen or start from scratch. Biodiversity Challenge isn't about things you only see on your campus or during your time at university, your PSL life list is a long term effort to find and record as much wildlife in the British Isles as you can over the course of your life. We are not a recording platform though, generally in Great Britain we encourage you to use iRecord for submitting records of everything you tick off on PSL but other recording platforms might be more relevant in your country/county/region.

3). Add your list to your university by clicking on 'view lists' on the drop down menu, then select 'view communities'. You can filter the list of communities by 'higher education'. What you are looking at here are the rankings of the collective totals for each university. 

Either join the relevant community/university or if it's not there, create it yourself (please remember to assign all universities to the community type of 'higher education'). Stick to the official title of your university so that others can find it easily. Anyone can join any community. 

4). Click on your university to see the full species list, then click on the 'view base list rankings' icon.

This will take you to the rankings within your university, Bangor University rankings looked like this at the time of writing.


5). Degree, masters, PhD, post doc and university staff all count (we encourage lecturers to get involved too) but the idea of these rankings is that when you finish university, you should leave the community. That way, the next wave of students have the opportunity to reach the number one spot (albeit only temporarily).

6). Get out there and get pan-species listing, you never know where it might take you by the end of your degree. You could even set up a PSL group at your university. Have a look if there is a PSL group active within your region/county too, we are a sociable lot and always happy to help the next generation of naturalists. It's fun, worthwhile and a great source of dopamine! Although you leave the community at the end of your course, ideally you'll maintain your pan-species list throughout your whole life. After 16 years of PSL, I have just recorded my 10,000th species!

Louis Tapster of Unorthodox Sketch created the artwork for this, which I absolutely love (the collective totals shown are entirely random and are meant as an example only). We record across 38 different taxonomic groups in Pan-species Listing (not just the eight examples shown here). There's lots more information about what PSL is all about on the website here. For a deeper dive, you could also read my book, which you can buy straight from Pelagic here (you can get a 25% discount after you have signed up to the website).  

Finally, please do remember this is about building a sound knowledge base and not just about ticking things off a list. Go at a rate that you are comfortable with, record everything as you go, teach your fellow students (and they'll help you in turn) and only use AI when you've exhausted all other options - picture matching and keying out are vital skills to learn to become a good naturalist and help you retain that hard won identification knowledge. There are some brilliant Gen Z naturalists already coming out of university with thousands of species under their belts, the approach really does work.

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