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.
I usually reserve three exclamation marks for things like Crimson Speckled but this immense achievement is also worthy of such an accolade. Bob Foreman has, over the last year or so, constructed the new
Sussex Moth Group website and it is a masterpiece of ingenuity and programming. He has given the SMG an amazing resource and in the style of Web 2.0, we as members of the group can add our words and pictures to continue to build our understanding of the county's moth fauna. I asked Bob to write a piece for the blog, a first for The Lyons Den. Bob, over to you:
"It was Penny that got the ball rolling, I seem to remember she asked
me whether I could update and prettify the existing SMG pages on the
sussex-butterflies website. It was something I had been thinking about
but had never really got around to. I think the idea then started
escalating and it then occurred to me that maybe we could use the SxBRC
records as the basis for a site that was more than just a few moth
photos and the contact details for the committee members.
The
important thing in my mind, was to create a site that wasn't a slavish
copy of other moth websites, some of which are undoubtedly excellent,
but to produce something a bit different and, importantly,
Sussex-centric. I also felt that as it was the Sussex Moth Group and not
"Sussex-moths" website, it should be designed so that group members would
find it easy to contribute to the content.
I
enjoy a programming challenge and the thought of having to work out a
way to extract and display data in a useful form from more than a third
of a million individual records sounded like fun. Not only that but it
had to be designed so that as new records came in they could easily be
added to the site in order to make it as up to date as possible. Because
the data the site uses are "real" records, submitted to the SxBRC, it
allows for detailed distribution (1km scale) and phenology charts
(single day) and can generate some remarkable images.
After
putting together a "test" site and with the input of the committee, the
site started coming together. There was one big problem, If we were to
have a detailed account of the status and ecology of every moth in
Sussex, where on Earth would we get that sort of information and, almost
as importantly, who was going to write it? At the time the site was
being developed, Colin Pratt (county moth recorder) was publishing his epic "Complete History of the Moths and Butterflies of Sussex" and he
very generously allowed us to use this as the prime resource for this
information. Great, that's the solution to a major problem, but it
didn't answer how we were to get somewhere between 100 and 150 words
written on all the 1828 species on the website (that works out at a word
count of approximately quarter of a million!). Distributed computing -
that's the answer - if it's good enough for hunting for extra-solar
planets or alien intelligence, it's surely good enough for us. A
spreadsheet of all the Sussex species was prepared and chopped into
chunks of thirty, these chunks are passed out to willing members (who
also own a copy of Colin's book) who fill in the blank column, they're
then sent back to me and I pop them into the database - simple. More
than 800 species have this information on their individual pages now
and hopefully the rest will follow in the not too distant future. This
information can be, and in quite few cases has been, augmented by any
registered user of the site. Relevant information on any species can
simply be added, creating a more complete picture of that species's status.
The
number of species that we have photos of is increasing almost daily.
The simple system for uploading photos was designed to allow
users to upload photos to the site with (hopefully) the minimum of
hassle.
Future development:
- A trapping report (sightings) page.
- E-mail updates of new news items, events postings or other site updates.
- Equipment loan booking page
- Possibly even a page on moth parasitoids"
A huge thank you to Bob, this website really is the jewel in the crown of the group and I look forward to using and adding to the website over the coming years. Bob's efforts have resulted in him being 'rewarded' with a place on the SMG committee through the creation of a new position: Webmaster! What are you waiting for?
Go and have a look here! http://www.sussexmothgroup.org.uk/
I was very proud to give this talk on Saturday at the National Moth Recording Conference in Birmingham. Putting this talk together made me realise just how active the group is and also, how lucky we are in Sussex. Some of the comments I got after giving the talk supported this further. I think that the most important thing with any such group is openness and inclusivity. Everyone and every group is talking to every other person and group. Strong relationships between the Sussex Moth Group and Sussex Wildlife Trust, Butterfly Conservation and particularly the Sussex Biodiversity Records Centre are in my opinion (after an enthusiastic membership) the reasons why our group works so well.
I still get nervous before talking to this many (200) people and I think I always will but I do my best to hide it. I think the nerves keep you on your toes.
It was great to see some old friends and we came up with all sorts of ideas for field trips and holidays for the summer. I also spent over £100 on books...
My favourite talks were about the forthcoming micro moth book and the evolution of bats and moths. Oh yeah, the kites. On my north bound journey I saw 80, that's not a typo, 80 kites! On my way south today, I saw only three.
This is a Red-headed Chestnut and it's a really rare migrant moth. Caught several days ago in Bracklesham Bay, this moth was shown tonight in the exhibits section of the Sussex Moth Group meeting. I love seeing new species but I refuse to add a species in a pot to my list. If we start counting species behind plastic on our pan-species lists, then why not go to a zoo and start ticking off tigers and monkeys? Where do you draw the line? I think if you are on the same survey as someone and they put a specimen in a container to show you to stop it flying off, then that is OK. I won't be ticking this moth but I thought it made an interesting story. Where do other listers stand on this?
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