Pan-species listing: If you haven't heard of it yet, then where have you been for the last six years? Seriously though, if you need a re-cap have a look at our most
excellent website. My own personal pan-species list has took something of a back seat over the last two months and so has entering records. The reason: You see, on the website beyond your own personal quest to see as many species as possible we set up the '
location rankings' too. This way a site can have a pan-species list, collated down the decades by a complementary consortium of naturalists. This, I always thought would have profound implications for wildlife conservation...but the dream of every reserve manager in the UK creating and maintaining a pan-species list for their sites never took off. Yet.
So I felt like I needed to kick start things and show everyone the benefits. Now I'd had a stab at some of our sites before but I hadn't maintained a list, just the species totals. So what better way is there to celebrate all the amazing wildlife I help look after than to know EXACTLY what it is and, to really add some value to it, WHEN (year) it was last recorded. So I started it and I've just 'finished' it. Obviously it will never be finished and it's been designed to be continuously updated. This is the first of a series of posts I'm going to write to explain why I did it, what can be done, what analysis there is and how to come to terms with my life after the list (maybe to get ALL the wildlife trusts to create one mega-list?!). So not too many spoilers yet on the stats, I'm going to drip feed them as I actually figure out new and novel ways to analyse this behemoth of a spreadsheet. So where to start? Perhaps with why. And what I think we'll be able to use it for.
- Straight off, fun and interesting facts. I can now pretty much tell you anything about the species on our sites. Such as we have recorded 9770 species (expect this to be constantly changing). 5537 of these are insects and 6188 are invertebrates. 63.3% of everything recorded on our reserves is an invertebrate. Vertebrates come in at 406 species (4.2%). And people wonder why I am always banging on about insects? Anyway, this is going to be a treasure trove for the Communications team. Take for example 'unique' species. Species seen on only one of the 32 sites. Of the 9770 species, 3799 have only been seen at one site! (38.9%). Rye Harbour has the lion's share of uniques with 1276 being recorded there (29.9% of what is there has only been recorded there on our reserve network). All the photos in the above collage are of unique species. Perhaps analysing by reserve manager will be the most controversial (i.e. who has the most species on their reserves - and yes I have already done it!).
- It has value in its own right as an inventory of what we have and when it was last recorded. Using the conservation statuses, you can do all sorts of analyses on site quality. You can also use this to inform the management plans. The biological site description is going to be rather effortless from now on. The plan from now is to only update each site from the records that come in to the SxBRC when the plans are up for renewal or mid-term renewal, every five years basically. This is only then a few hours work. In the mean time...
- A copy of the spreadsheet will be given to anyone that wants it: Reserve managers, volunteers, keen naturalists. They can then update and fill in the gaps but the deal is EVERYTHING has to be submitted to the SxBRC, putting it in the spreadsheet doesn't count other than as a guide for these people on the ground as it is the records that are put in to SxBRC that will be used to update, by me, every five years. The plans are all on a rotation, three or four come up each year. Only three staff are going to have access to the master list though.
- You can run the invertebrate data through a resource database to tell you more about your sites that way.
- It highlights gaps. And there are some huge gaps that I would never have realised if I hadn't gone through this process. I'll be talking about these briefly at Adastra. Two of our big sites have not a single fly record!!! In one case, this is already being addressed in 2017.
- The whole thing is modular. You can say pull out just the moths and do a talk to Sussex Moth Group, which is already happening by the way. It works the other way too. Imagine what the WHOLE wildlife trust network species list would look like?! Then you could like at the unique species to Sussex!
These are just some of the reasons that I have always believed pan-species listing is such a good thing for nature conservation. It's an approach that leaves no stone unturned and favours the little guys as much as it does the big obvious ones.
So what's next? Some talks coming up and various articles to go out on this. I'm keen to run a series of blogs on it over the next few months, the next might be on uniqueness but it could be on the beetles of Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves, I'm open to suggestions. I feel like I have created a monster/a thing of beauty and I am yet to know quite how to realise all of its potential. I'm looking forward to getting on with other stuff again though.
I'd like to say a huge thank you to all the people that have helped particularly Bob Foreman, Chris Bentley (for compiling Rye Harbour's species list), Frances Abraham and many many more.
A couple of weeks ago at the annual Sussex Biological Recorder's Seminar I was approached by Brad Scott (above) during lunch who said "thanks ever so much for that course on Grasses, Sedges and Rushes that you ran several years ago, it really kick-started my interest in natural history." Now if I tell you that since this course, Brad has been on my Common Woodland Bryophytes course and has almost seen more mosses and liverworts than me now (have a look at the PSL rankings for bryophytes) it starts to put things in perspective. Yet this is just the start of Brad's natural history adventures!
It's exactly this kind of inspiration that I always hope my courses will provide. It's certainly not going to be everyone that gets the bug like this but even if we reach one or two people a year in this way we are making a difference. So, I asked Brad if he would mind writing a few words about his experience with the Trust's courses and this is what he put together...
"The first Sussex Wildlife Trust course I did was Graeme Lyons' fabulous weekend
on Grasses, Sedges and Rushes about five years ago. It really inspired me to
further explore the rich and varied habitats we have right on our doorstep. A
couple of years ago I also did the Mosses and Liverworts course too, and that
prompted me to find out more at the local field meetings of the British
Bryological Society and tentatively start recording. Not content just to look at
plants, starting a Pan-Species List has
provided me a focus for attempting to comprehend the diversity of all habitats.
In addition, appreciating that exploring the natural world is best shared with
other people, I've also been involved starting up a local natural history
group in Forest Row, and occasionally blogging. Wildlife Trust courses are clearly an
excellent way to learn, share, and ignite one's passion for all
wildlife."
This sort of thing really is music to my ears and inspires me in turn to keep going with these courses and produce new material annually. Brad's rather stylish and understated blog is a great read, particularly his post on wildlife recording and how a relative beginner really can contribute quite a lot if you work closely with more experienced naturalists. So to tie all this together myself, Brad and the country recorder for bryophytes are going to go looking for the rare and elusive Ghostwort in the Ashdown Forest one weekend in March. We will probably look something like this. Watch this space.
So why not book on one of the many fantastic courses
Sussex Wildlife Trust has to offer? I can't promise that you'll become a Ghostbuster but you will certainly learn something about the amazing wildlife of Sussex and have a great time in the process. Call 01273 497561 for more info (I resisted saying it!).
I gave a talk at the the Surrey recorders seminar yesterday, an updated version of a talk I gave to the Sussex recorders back in 2012. Half way through the talk I hijacked my own presentation with a short presentation called 'The Natural History of Pan-species Listers'. As the PSL community gave me the information to do this, I thought it only right to share it with everyone. Please bare in mind that this is only a subset of a maximum of 28 of the 51 listers that gave me their info. There have been some interesting changes in the last two years. First off. The number of people doing it! I couldn't get everyone onto a single slide for 2014! I imagine the website can't come soon enough for Mark at this rate!
The other interesting thing was the change in age classes. There has been a rapid increase in the number of twenty somethings which is really encouraging.
Here is the list size versus age graph which basically shows the rate at which you have seen what you have seen!
I find this really interesting. Jonty and Dave are clearly out at front. Mark, Richard, Scotty and I are all more or less lined up. There is the obvious cluster of the 'twenty somethings', another cluster in the 'forty somethings' a strange void in the 'thirty somethings' and beyond that not a lot of meaning at all. Another way of displaying this is...
But the balance between men and women needs a little working on!
I have the 2012 and the 2014 PSL atlases too but I just need to check if I can put them online.
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. I had a few comments about the lack of mycological expertise expressed in the rankings. My answer to this was that they just haven't signed up yet. It seems to me that you can either go down a predominantly invertebrate route with this, or a predominantly fungi and lower plants route. As it's taken off with the former, I believe most of the people are drawn into it are currently more invertebrate focused. To have a few experts in mycology in the rankings with huge fungi lists would be great and would start to address this balance.
I also heard a sad story that a young lister was told it was a waist of time by their university lecturer! I think it was something along the lines of "all you would ever record are common species that nobody is interested in"! I believe this to be a very misinformed comment and I'm glad that who ever it was has stuck with it!
Another comment made seemed to think that most people could never tackle the keys out there with any competency and it would just produce lots of rubbish records. This goes totally against my approach to this and why I support PSL so much. My attitude is this, if someone else can do it, then I can do it and the only thing stopping me is not having the right equipment or literature. By being fearless with natural history and tackling new groups I have completely changed my approach. New taxa, keys and nomenclature are now something I thrive off not hide away from. Things are only hard when you don't know how to do them! I am not saying I haven't made a few mistakes along the way, but that's what county recorders and people further up the list are for!
A final point which I will be including in the website is the concept of PSL site rankings. This would be great way to engage nature reserve management staff in recording on their sites so if you have the ability to start putting a site list together (not just for a single person I should, a collective effort over time for a site) or already have one then please pass it on to me. It would be nice to have a few lists to kick start the website. Many people who are not interested in PSL have told me they would be interested in this. Rye Harbour for example must be up there as one of the most biodiverse sites in the UK.
Finally, as Scotty missed it. Here is the slide I put up to show that I am not in anyway competitive!
So we all have are weak points, right? The one area that I have not been fastidious in keeping up to date and accurate with has been Hemiptera. That is until today. Last week I took on the role of county recorder for Heteroptera. Now for those out there that are not familiar wit the taxonomy of insects, bugs (or true bugs) are collectively known as Hemiptera. This order is split into a number of suborders. The classic bugs, such as shield bugs and ground bugs, fall into the order Heteroptera (this is what I will be covering). The hoppers used to be in the sub order Homoptera but this now has the awfully unpronounceable name of Auchenorrhyncha. Alan Stewart will continue to be the county recorder for these. Then you have psyllids (Sternorrhyncha) which I haven't done anything with yet.
On my list I have previously just treated them to order with a total of 137 species of Hemiptera as of first thing this morning. For this group I have been keeping a paper checklist that I update as a I see new species but today I finally got around to updating this digitally and pulling everything together. I'm glad that I actually came out with 149 Hemiptera, in total being 132 Heteroptera and 17 Auchenorrhyncha, that from now on, on my list I will call true bugs and hoppers respectively. So I end the day on 4798 species, 12 species up. I'm glad to find that I was under-recording rather than over-recording! All the gaps are filled in and the missing species added to Recorder.
Of the 583 species of Heteroptera on the systematic list on
British Bugs, I have seen only 132, just 22.6% of the fauna. Plenty of room to for improvement which is great as far as I am concerned. I searched my photo archive for a species that had slipped through the net and this was all I could find. It's the Nb
Dicranocephalus medius, a bug that feeds on Wood Spurge that I saw at Rewell Wood in 2009 but have not seen since. So the first thing I need to do as county recorder now I have sorted my own bug business, is do the same for East and West Sussex and find out what the county list is, then I'll be in a better position to write an article about it for next year's Adastra and start doing some of the more fun stuff! Like trying to fill in the gaps and promoting bug recording. That leaves me with just one question that is best asked by Hudson from Aliens:
"Is this gonna be stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"
I am giving a talk on pan-species listing at the next Adastra conference in Sussex and wanted to do some analysis of the pan-species listers themselves. Firstly, I'd like to make a distribution map of where you live so, if you wouldn't mind, could you email me the first part of your postcodes please? Of course, after the presentation, I'll be happy to put this on my blog and leave it in the public domain for all to use. The second bit of information is perhaps a little more sensitive and no worries if you don't want to give it, I'm after your ages! I'd love to do a correlation between age and your list and to show the age frequency distribution. I'd be happy not to show this on my blog if people didn't want it to. I don't need them all but a good representable proportion will probably do. Ha ha, I've just re-read this. As if listing wasn't nerdy enough, I intend to make it so nerdy that it pops right out the back of nerdy into the realm of cool. That's what's I think anyway.
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