An Alternative Natural History of Sussex.
This blog shows the highlights of my day to day findings as a naturalist and ecologist living and working in Sussex. Delivered with a pinch of nihilism, a dash of sarcasm and absolutely no tweeness, here is my attempt to show natural history as it really is: Brutal, beautiful, uncompromising and fascinating...and occasionally ridiculous.
I have been studying natural history for some thirty years, nineteen in a professional capacity. I currently work in Sussex as a freelance entomologist, ecologist and botanist and specialise in nature reserve and rewilding management advice based on the interpretation of the surveys I carry out. I also run a number of identification courses. An advocate of the pan-species listing approach. My main areas of interest are birds, plants and invertebrates and a lot of my spare time is spent in the field. I am the county recorder for spiders and bugs.
So this has been a pet hate of mine for years. And after a rant on Twitter recently, I thought it was best to put all my thoughts down on this in one place. Firstly, this is not a rant at inexperienced naturalists, those with a passing interest or those new to the subject. This is very much directed at those who are intentionally spelling the names of species in lower case. It's mainly nature conservation charities, natural history writers and journalists. And of course, Wikipedia! New nature conservation projects that start up are now incorrectly following this trend and there isn't really a resistance pushing back on this. Just because its written like this on Wikipedia, it really doesn't mean it's right!
But before anyone says it, I am 100% pro scientific names. This isn't about that. This is about having a standardised, scientific and useful structure to how we write about species in English. Quite often, I would find any scientific names would be kicked out of any writing I did BUT on top of this, the correctly capitalised English names would be written in lower case. It's infuriating. I'm also not talking here about globalised names like Eurasian Nuthatch. It's a Nuthatch as far as I am concerned. But that's a different argument.
Since I started this blog over eleven years ago, I have only ever displayed just the English names, ONLY when they are in regular use. So, for macro moths, butterflies, dragonflies, crickets etc. Beyond that I tend to use English names with the scientific name or just the scientific name if there is no standardised/regularly used English name at all. Many people new to entomology will not know that many English names have been created in recent years and are not in wide use by entomologists. This can lead to a difficult situation where newcomers are talking a different language to specialists. For this reason, I am not condoning using English names over scientific names at all and I encourage beginners to not be afraid of scientific names and to embrace them even.
This is is simply about having a standardised approach to how we write these common names. The dumbing down of English names and the resistance against using scientific names are connected though. They are both areas we are failing in our nature writing, assuming people can't cope with anything complex. We are pandering to the lowest common denominator and it's a big part of why so many complex issues in conservation are so poorly understood by the general public.
But get this, the natural world is REALLY, REALLY complicated. Simple solutions to complex problems do not work. In fact they are really harmful. So we should be embracing complexity and nuance.
I digress. Here's why it's a bad idea to write species names in English in lower case.
It's confusing
I once wrote a piece about Scarce 7-spot Ladybirds. The name was reduced to scarce 7-spot ladybird and an image was sourced of a 7-spot ladybird with the adjective scarce put in front of it. As you know, 7-spot Ladybird is not scarce. In fact, it's my most frequently recorded invertebrate. While Scarce 7-spot Ladybird is indeed quite scarce. A totally different species with a very different ecology.
But this works the other way around too. I once had my adjectives in front of scientific names mistaken for species names in a report. Well, if your house style is to do this, why would you assume any otherwise? Another reason to not have such a ridiculous 'house style' in the first place, especially when you have limited knowledge of the species you are publishing information on. It went like this. I had written something like "the scarce deadwood click beetle Ampedus elongantulus". Now the scientific name was discarded to find the text now talking about the 'scarce deadwood click beetle' as if it were a species name. This was done to a number of species from some text I had written. Infuriating!
There is more info in these capitals than some people realise
We have three species of forester in the UK (metallic green day-flying moths). Yes, you read that right. It's lower case because I am not referring to a species here, in fact I am referring to three species from two genera. They are; Cistus Forester, Scarce Forester and the Forester. It's very easy to get the Forester in the strict sense of the species confused with forester in the generic sense. There's the rub. There is meta data in those capitals telling you that it's a species. Distinct from being a genus, family or some other way of grouping things together. They are all shown at the top of this post but here is the Forester, perhaps the hardest one to find in Sussex.
And not far behind the lower case names is the abandonment of hyphens
Not always the case but if hyphens are going to be dropped or used incorrectly, it's often when species are written in lower case. Take for example the plant White Beak-sedge. In lower case it reads white beak-sedge and if you drop the hyphen, it's now white beak sedge. Now how can you tell what genus that's in? Is it a sedge (Carex) or a beak-sedge (Rhynchospora). There is yet more more meta data here. And you know what? No one should get to take that away and leaved behind some reduced form of a name that has less information in it, in the name of 'style' or easy reading.
The arguments for using lower case are utterly unconvincing
They are: it's too complicated. Rubbish. Is it too complicated to write your name, a book, a film or a place correctly? Of course it isn't. It is only confusing because we now have two systems (and some other variants in between these two systems) working concurrently. It's no surprise when newcomers reach for Wikipedia that they start writing them incorrectly in lower case. It doesn't read well. Again, total nonsense. Just look up and see if it reads badly. Or read British Wildlife or any of the other publications that get it right. No one ever died from reading a capital letter or two in the middle of sentence. Capitals are going out of fashion. Yeah this one really doesn't wash with me for all the reasons under 'it's too complicated'. I'm aware language can change but not all change is good or should be embraced. It's grammatically incorrect. And finally we get to the real sticking point. They are not proper nouns (apparently). Hence why we end up with the hideous chimera of naming styles, such as Cetti's warbler and Mediterranean gull. Yuck! And here I will explain why I believe it is perfectly correct to think of these names as proper nouns...
There can be no better use of proper nouns than to denote species names
When we talk about species, we are not talking about individuals. We are talking about genetically distinct life forms, each with a near enough UNIQUE genetic code. It's the code we are really talking about. This is therefore a more than adequate reason to use proper nouns when referring to them. It would also draw the naming inline with the scientific nomenclature to some extent. It would result in less confusion.
These names mean a lot to naturalists
I have met very few recorders, naturalists and entomologists who actually like the lower case names, literally less than five people I've encountered have ever strongly stuck up for it. While I have met hundreds of naturalists who detest it. To me, it is a significant part of the name, in many cases taken away from us by people working outside of the field. And as said above, there is a reduced name left behind, with considerable margins for error. I just can't keep quiet about it any more. So I decided to get organised.
I mean how can a Subaru Forester be seen as a 'compound proper noun' but a Cistus Forester isn't? Yet more examples of how the natural world is seen as inferior to things that have been created by people. OK, I see why Subaru is a proper noun, it's a make. Fair enough but the Forester part? Each of those vehicles coming off the production line follows a blueprint that makes them similar to one another but different to other models of that make. So how is that any different to what I'm talking about here? The grammatical rules are not clear cut and as mentioned above, can you think of a better example than to use them? Language is fluid and flexible. We should use a set of rules IF they work in favour of bettering that area of language. There is a clear case for that here.
Having a standardised and structured approach to English names would therefore benefit recording and the natural world. With less ambiguity on how names are written we can bring some of the rigour that we have from scientific names into the English names of species. There is no better time to be having this conversation as so many new people are getting into wildlife recording and ecological restoration and as mentioned above, they are usually hungry for English names of species at first.
What can you do?
Well if you're having this thrust upon you by your organisation or boss, tell them that you're not happy with it and why. Try and push them in the right direction. Feel free to send them this blog.
When you write an article for someone, tell them how the names are going to be written. Use it as a negotiating point for giving someone the work. You can only use my photo or text if you spell the name correctly etc.
If these things don't work, just write them correctly and see what happens. If enough people have to spend ages putting names into lower case then surely they will get the message one day. It's the naturalists providing the content, I really think we have some leverage here.
When new projects are set up, give people a steer in the right direction. There is a tendency to reach for Wikipedia. But you would be better reaching for a field guide, British Wildlife, the NBN gateway species accounts or the JNCC Taxon Designations spreadsheet.
Let's properly get organised. If there is anyone out there that feels as passionately about this as I do, drop me a message or a comment and you can join a growing number of us who are proper fed up with this.
You might also detect a little anger in my tone here. You'd be right! To have this inflicted upon you from the very first piece of writing you ever did for years is utterly infuriating. But we did work on Sussex Wildlife Trust over the years and they have brilliantly switched to writing species in capitals, a really positive move and this shows how much this particular wildlife trust puts recording, wildlife and science over style and trends. A really progressive step forward. So it can be done!
Who would you rather be on the side of? The style gurus and the grammar police or the passionate naturalists who actually write the content and know what they are talking about?
I really don't think this should ever have been a 'choice'. We should have one system.
Three weeks ago, I had a rare weekend off. The plan was to meet up with my mate Thomas Curculio (you should see his rostrum - he puts Gonzo to shame) and head to Wybunbury Moss on the Saturday and Chartley Moss on the Sunday. Both sites we had permits for and both being dangerous floating mires (or schwingmoors), it was good having someone who had been there before to guide. I love floating mires, probably the most exciting habitat for spiders. But being close to where I grew up makes them all the more exciting.
Now there were three targets at Wybunbury that I really wanted to get. And as I was researching them the night before from gen provided by Richard Gallon (thanks, man!), an incredible coincidence occurred. Stewart Sexton copied me into a Tweet (thanks, dude!). Joshua Styles (thanks, fella!) found one of the target species at a second UK site. Just over the border in Cranberry Bog in Staffs. As the crow flies, it's only 3 miles from Wybunbury in Cheshire. So I offered to go and have a look after Wybunbury, to try and find another and confirm it. Both Thomas Curculio and I have tried numerous times to access Cranberry Bog and failed...
But first, Wybunbury. The only bog I have seen with Common Cow-wheat growing in the bog. It's really odd but looks really cool (Josh was telling me this is a unique community). And more White Beak-sedge than I have ever seen before.
It didn't take long to find a Gnaphosa nigerrima (nationally rare and vulnerable - not surprising given that it's only ever been known from the one bog). We saw maybe 15 of these, mostly adult females and one sub-adult male. Much smaller than I was expecting and actually not far off a big Zelotes/Drassyllus. In Sphagnum but also in the suction sampler. Actually it was dwarfed by an adult female Haplodrassus signifer I found there.
It did however take three and a half hours to find Calositticus floricola (nationally rare, near threatened). Thomas found two adult males in the last few minutes of our time there. The other goody there is a tiny liny Carorita limnaea (nationally rare, vulnerable), so would have to wait until I got back to the microscope to see if I had found that one (but I was pretty sure I had picked up a few females).
Back to Calositticus floricola though. This might be the best jumping spider I have ever seen. Up close, it really is something else. Here is a whole sequence of the male.
And I mustn't forget this Wybunbury speciality! Thomas was great at finding these wonderful Cryptocephalus decemmaculatus. A lifer indeed (thanks, mate!). Every species in this genus is a joy.
So, onto Cranberry Bog, Staffs. The same frustrating access antics AGAIN. How on Earth do we get into it?! I mean, we could see it through the trees, oh help me someone, help me please! Sorry, went all Kate Bush for a minute there. But the black peaty water under the Alders between us and the bog was not an option. We nearly gave up but I spotted some tracks through and eventually spotted the Indiana Jones style 'rope bridge' that Joshua had told us to look for. We were in! But we would never be the same again.
First sweep net had THREE Calositticus floricola in it. That'll be new to Staffordshire then. Here is the adult female I caught. It's so much easier to find this at Cranberry than Wybunbury. How can this have been overlooked all these years? We reckon we found 30+.
And it didn't take long to confirm Joshua's amazing record of Gnaphosa nigerrima at it's now second UK site! What I love about this is that I never would have gone there that day if I hadn't seen that tweet. So this jumper is also in part down to that. Also there were a few Pirata piscatorius there, another species scarce in Staffs. This bog is way wetter than Wybunbury and Chartley.
And a big patch of Marsh Cinquefoil. Here with a Blue Shieldbug on it.
For the year, that's me on 339 species of spider. The 400 is still very much on the table but August can pretty much do one as far as I am concerned.
Going through the specimens back at the accommodation was, as ever, thrilling (I did indeed get Carorita and a few other goodies I wouldn't see down south). Just like that though, my world turned upside down. I got the kind of text you never want to get. One of my favourite people in the whole world was gone suddenly. My old friend Tony Gowland. I was proper heart broken and have found it hard to write this blog until now. To be honest, spiders have took a back seat for a few weeks. Twelve years ago, it was Tony that got me my old desk, which I use every time I look down the microscope or write a report. In fact, most of these blog posts. So know this Tone, every single freelance conservation project I do or have ever done, you've helped me with it and in turn, you've helped nature. But not only that, it looks bloody brilliant in the process.
Sometime in 2009 a telephone call went like this...
Tony: "Alright Graybags, do you want a desk?"
Graeme: "I just bought one, thanks mate."
Tony: "Not like this you ain't. It's a Victorian gentleman's desk."
Graeme: "Errrr-"
Tony: "You need to say now though, as I need to empty the van."
Graeme: "YES PLEASE!"
I would literally pay people to keep calling me Graybags. How little you realise how important such a daft name is until it's gone.
Rained off again yesterday and most of today it would seem. Frustrating how quickly you can get behind after being ahead. But an opportunity to do some spider recording it was (they are less effected by weather than a lot of other taxa and if you pick the right habitat, the problems of wet vegetation that stop a full survey can be minimised). So I got in touch with Amberley Museum and got access to a few areas of Amberley Chalk Pit. I had two targets in mind; Iberina candida and Eratigena picta. I failed to find both (well, I might have an immature of the latter) but I don't care. I found something even rarer. But first, the supporting cast...
Almost the first rock I turned over had a Zodarion retreat underneath it! Never actually seen this before so was pretty pleased. I found two females of what is Zodarion italicum. I have records for this at Shoreham Beach but they are not in my database for some reason, other than that this is only the second West Sussex record.
A real surprise for me was this stunning Xerolycosa nemoralis. I have only ever seen this on bare sandy ground on heaths. Its nationally scarce and a new 10 km square record. It just shows that spiders will use any structural type that is analogous to what they need. The soil here is exposed and friable, a successional state of old quarries that is quite uncommon. Many are vegetated over, mossy or with a tight sward. Not so here.
Moving to the scree generated some excitement. I spent an hour trying to catch an adult of what I thought was going to be Eratigena picta. It was Tegenaria silvestris. Bugger. A clearly very different looking spider but in the heat of the moment, I was rather excited. It was still new for the year, however!
Scree is hard to work. My suction sampler was useless here. All I had was my hands. I found Hahnia nava and montana but no Iberina candida either. I did see plenty of Palliduphantes pallidus.
And found some nice adult Mitostoma chrysomelas.
And a huge golden yellow liny that escaped me. Only to resurface some 30 minutes later. I am extremely persistent. It was Saaristoa abnormis. Only the second time I have seen it and my first male/Sussex specimen and a new 10 km square.
Rosy Woodlouse was extremely common under stones there.
And who needs pheromones when you have a suction sampler? Six-belted Clearwing sucked off the chalk!
Walking around the old buildings in the Museum, the UK's biggest jumping spider, Marpissa muscosa, caught my eye.
But it wasn't until I got home and looked at the specimens that things got really exciting. A little yellow thing about 1.5 mm (that I have to say, I have no memory of collecting) jumped out immediately as a Centromerus when I clocked the epigyne, and not one I recognised either. I just wanted to completely rule out Centromerus serratus, so asked Tylan for a second opinion and he kindly sent me a photo of an epigyne and I was happy to rule it out then (he sees that more than me and I don't have a specimen of the female). It was Centromerus albidus! Critically Rare, Nationally Rare and get this...not seen in the UK since 1969!!! So this made up for not finding the targets as this is significantly rarer and totally unexpected. It's also new to Sussex and you can find out more on the SRS page here.
The page mentions Beech woods, so this is a totally different habitat to the old sites.
I got seven new spiders for the year, ending on 312 (including Tetragnatha obtusa and only my second ever Troxochrus scabriculus - EDIT, it wasn't Troxochrus. it was Entelecara flavipes). Here is a list of the species seen that had conservation status.
Centromerus albidus - NR/CR
Drassyllus lutetianus - NS
Marpissa muscosa - NS
Zodarion italicum - NS
Xerolycosa nemoralis - NS
Entelecara flavipes - NS
Six-belted Clearwing - Nb
Orthochaetes setiger - Nb
It was very kind of the Museum to let me access this fantastic site. It's not a public access site though, and is dangerous without a brief, so please don't go there without talking to the Museum. One thing I am sure of, there is more to be found at this amazing site and I will be back.
So what better way to celebrate than with some Mouse Rat?
Yesterday was a significant day for me. Twenty years since I started my career in conservation, at Dungeness RSPB Reserve. So I took the day off the day before, to go spider hunting to Surrey. I have decided that year-listing spiders is on again this year. So I have notched up my efforts in the last few weeks. I headed out to Surrey, to Whitley Common that I know well and to two sites I have never been to be for. Chobham and Whitmoor Commons, both Surrey Wildlife Trust reserves. All in all, I recorded 86 species of spider in one day, which I was pretty pleased with.
I'll start with Whitmoor Common, where I found a couple of the amazing Cheiracanthium pennyi (Nationally Rare/Endangered), very much restricted to a few Surrey heaths, not seen away from Surrey heaths since the 1990s it would seem. Look at this beauty! That's a lifer for me.
And of course, no trip to a Surrey heath is complete without Oxyopes heterophthalmus (Nationally Rare/Vulnerable). Rather pleased with this first shot.
Then on to Gracious Pond for my second lifer of the day. Calositticus caricis (Nationally Rare/Section 41). Took a little while to find but found two females thanks to Mike Waite's gen.
Whilst searching, I found a few other nice goodies here. What seems to be the first Theonoe minutissima in Surrey since 1987. Agyneta cauta and Aphileta misera was also in the area, both new for the year.
Evarcha arcuata is common across all these sites.
And here he is with his mate, Evarcha falcata on the left.
Witley Common now, a site I looked at quite a bit last year. So was pleased to pick up a load more spiders with status there. Such as this impossible to photograph Theridion pinastri. A species that is really spreading in the south east and does not seem too tied to any particular habitat.
This male Neriene furtiva was a real cracker. The males have these really odd shaped abdomens, with over-sized palps, making for quite the ant mimic. Very dark too.
And on one pine tree I had Hypositticus pubescens (a surprisingly hard spider to find) and also under there, an adult female Micaria subopaca.
But the real excitement happened when I got home. Four funny looking linys that I swept all in one go were bothering me. Turns out, they were not linys but Dipoena erythropus! I have only seen one male of this spider before, at Southwood Woodland in Hants, amazingly on the 30th June too (back in 2019). This was definitely find of the day and is a whole new 10 km square for this Nationally Rare/Vulnerable spider. The dark body and all-pale legs are quite different to the other 'Dipoena' (or whatever they are called now) species and make it far more like a liny in the field than those species.
But it didn't stop there, I had also picked up a Philodromus emarginatus female without realising it! Yet another Nationally Rare/Vulnerable spider new to the site and the 10 km square. A particularly rich area of Witley sits in the square SU93 (that straddles the Surrey/Sussex boundary). It's a small slither, and as such it has not been well covered but many of the rare species on the site are in this area, meaning that lots of new 10 km square records have happened here. It just shows that you should always remember to check when submitting records exactly where they fall. So, that's 305 spiders for the year with 13 new ones from a single day out. A great way to celebrate 20 years working in conservation.
When I was working at the RSPB, I picked up mini Roberts from Old Moor in Yorkshire on an electro-fishing trip in 2004, I was a little intimidated by all the drawings of palps and epigynes until around 2010, when I became obsessed with spiders. It's amazing how much things can change in a decade. Anyways, here is the full species list from Wednesday (not all the new names are here as it's an output from my database). Species new to the year in bold.
In 2018, I found immatures of what looked like Enoplognatha mordax, in the Brede Valley. Soon after this, they were independently found on the Pevensey Levels (both sites not that far from each other in East Sussex either side of Hastings - just where you would expect a colonisation event from the continent to come from). This is quite different behaviour to Enoplognatha mordax, which is low to the ground on the upper limits of saltmarshes. A very restricted spider. I could not find an adult and that was that for the year. In 2019, it started turning up all over the place as immatures and not just in wet grassland. By this point, I started believing it was something different and Peter Harvey said we should get hold of an adult, preferably a male, as it might be something different. It's a complex genus, so this could be something totally different from Europe or further afield or something genetically distinct. I only found my first adult, a female, in 2020 (below).
But get this, it was nothing to do with levels/grazing marsh. It was from an arable margin on the Norfolk Estate on the top of the Downs. I sent it to Peter Harvey but what we really need was a male. The other recorder collected a male in 2019 from Pevensey but let it go, believing it to be mordax after photographing it. This shows the importance of keeping specimens, especially with such a bizarre occurrence like this as it's took me another two years to get a male. So finally, in 2021 I have started finding lots of adults. I had two males on a farm in East Sussex yesterday along the Cuckmere, with one running across a farm track in front of me (photo at the top of the page).
In June alone, I have recorded four males from three sites, all on lush arable margins on the Downs in both East and West Sussex. I also found a number of adult females along the stream restoration at Knepp about ten days ago, again swept from rank vegetation along ditches and streams. It's clearly well distributed in both counties. Enoplognatha mordax is usually found in litter, deep in rush tussocks, by suction or by lifting matts of algae on saltmarshes etc. I would never expect to find it where you find this thing and I don't think I have ever found it sweeping. My money is on a new species, but what species? Here is the habitat of yesterday's males. Not especially specialised. It seems to prefer this stuff than the original sites of grazing marsh/levels. But that's where I have been recording a lot this year, so there could be an observer bias here.
Not the best video, but here is the male moving north across a farm track. This spider is clearly able to disperse well. Quite different to mordax. When I surveyed East Head and Rye Harbour, move a few metres from the saltmarsh edge and that's the end of mordax records. Why would a spider behave exactly the same for over a 100 years, then suddenly behave really differently, but only in one specific part of the country? It must be a colonisation event, surely?
Here is an actual Enoplognatha mordax from Rye in 2013. Certainly looks pretty similar but this new thing appears a little more robust according to Peter Harvey and I would agree with that.
I am sending more of my specimens to Peter Harvey who is going to pass them on to Peter Merrett. Peter believes there are subtle but significant differences in the male's palps (I struggled with this to be fair but did notice one area on the palps that did look a little different - I am going to see if what I collected yesterday matches up with this now) and that it could be either a new species to the UK (my belief) or a speciation in action. I predict it is going to turn up in neighbouring counties before the end of the year. Whatever it is, it's going to be a very common spider soon. Keep an eye out if you live in Kent, Surrey or Hampshire as this is spreading fast. Do any global spider recorders recognise this or its behaviour as a different species? Any help greatly appreciated. If you could pass this blog on to any spider specialists you know, especially in Europe or America, that would be greatly appreciated. I am wondering if there has been a similar occurrence in northern France an this thing has just hopped the Channel? Does anyone have a contact for a north France spider specialist?
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