07 October 2024

If you are familiar with the concept of biological recording then read on but, if you are new to it and want to learn more, then have a look at What is Biological Recording? before reading about a few updates we have planned.

As many of you will have seen, over the last few months I have been asking you for info, via the Facebook Group and/or direct contact, on the total number of records you have digitised over your life time.

Why are we doing this? Two reasons:

1. To show what the collective recording effort of pan-species listers is. We won’t be having a “recording rankings”, just a place on your profile (under ‘Biological Recording’) to enter a single total for your digitised records and the date you entered it. This will then collate into one single figure that will appear in the ‘Statistics’ box on the home page and will show something like “3,792,544 records collated by 35 listers”. We have taken the liberty of adding the totals you have provided to me already on to your profiles: if you are unhappy with this, you can edit/remove the figure easily, but please consider keeping it as it will greatly add weight to what we are doing. I think this total is pretty darn amazing and the fact that we rival a LERC already is incredible; as an example, Sussex Biodiversity Records Centre currently holds over 11.2 million records submitted by more than 1,200 recorders. We have generated over a third of that total with only 3% of the recorders!
2. To encourage better record keeping among pan-listers, especially with so many new people joining from a more birding background over the last year. This seemed like a great opportunity to bring biological recording into the heart of what we are doing and by having this accumulative total that will grow over time (and that we can all add too–no matter if it’s half a million records or a handful), we can all contribute. I expect I will update mine at least annually and we hope that everyone will do this. I’ll send out regular reminders when I update my record total, which for me is at the end of March/start of April each year before fieldwork commences in earnest, but you could update as often as you like.

Ideally, these records are then further shared to places like iRecord, local record centres and/or recording schemes. My working principle is, that anyone who goes to such lengths as to digitise a lifetime’s worth of natural history experiences, will want those records shared and used as much as possible. However, we accept that there are sometimes contractual and logistical limitations to this, so that some of your records will be pending submission. Don’t worry about excluding those, just provide a total of everything you have digested, they’ll find their way into wider use eventually.

It's fairly easy for me as I can just get the figure from my Recorder 6 database but you might have records in Excel, iRecord, iNaturalist, with one or more LRCs, BirdTrack, etc. Or all of the above. In which case, rough figures will do fine. Whatever works. If you have years’ worth of data in notebooks, this is a gentle encouragement to get that digitised and shared! And if you pan-species list but don’t record, well hopefully this is the start of an exciting chapter in your life where you start biological recording.

Although it’s hugely important that biological records are submitted and used more widely, we accept that that’s not the only reason to record. Recording itself is greatly beneficial to the individual making the records–adding a level of structure and rigour to a lifetime’s worth of effort. My personal enjoyment from generating my own species maps daily in my #speciesaday feature on X/Twitter, is as much for me to gain insight into my own records (such as revealing distributions of species I was unaware of, or highlight glaring gaps in my recording) as it is to inspire others. Biological recording is brilliant fun and hugely worthwhile for many different reasons but you’ll get the most out it, and more importantly nature will get the most out if it, if you do share them somewhere where others can use the. And doing so means, they are likely to still be of value in perpetuity, I take great comfort knowing my records will still be used long after I am gone.

We are also going to have a place for you to add the total number of species you have recorded new to Britain (and Ireland, Isle of Man and Channel Isles!) on your profile, which will again add up to form a collective total on the front page. We’ll display the figures together to look something like “3,792,544 records collated by 35 listers, including 204 species new to the British Isles”.

There are clearly many different levels of contribution towards a first for the British Isles–don’t get too hung up on this, whether you found it and identified it alone, as part of a group or identified it from someone else: these all count. We’ll also leave a space for you to list your species and provide a bit more info. It’s expected that multiple people might claim the same species and this is totally fine. We expect that we’ll have to do some editing of the final total to reflect this, but this won’t affect your total. If there are any reasons why a species you’ve had new to Britain might be shared by other people/listers, please highlight that on your list of species. My four species were fairly clear cut as being my records alone but a recent bug I had new to the British Isles on Jersey is an example where things might get difficult. Someone else can claim this when it eventually turns up in the UK and that’s fine, we’ll edit the total to reflect this. When a new species turns up and spreads rapidly, multiple people might find it in the same year but in these situations, one person is likely to have found it first and in those cases, they alone should really claim that record, unless you made some other significant contribution to its identification.

07 October 2024

Pan-species Listing and Biological Recording

The path to becoming a successful pan-species lister requires developing skills in observation and study as an all-round naturalist. This brings numerous personal benefits, but there is also a serious side to it in helping build a detailed collective understanding of our wildlife and its associated threats. To be able to effectively direct conservation actions it is necessary to know where species are, or were present. The most efficient way to know that is to collect, and share widely, detailed biological records. Hence we would encourage all those who enjoy pan-species listing to not just maintain their personal PSL list on this site, but also collect and share biological records with the relevant organisations.

The sections below describe what is involved with biological recording, and how to share your records.

Biological Records

Biological recording is the scientific study of the distribution of living organisms.

Biological records describe the presence, abundance, associations and changes, both in time and space, of wildlife.

At a minimum, four attributes define a biological record:

• What: the organism (typically species, sometimes other taxonomic levels e.g. genus, family, subspecies) that is being recorded
• Where: the location (typically OS grid reference, or latitude and longitude) where the organism was present
• When: the date (ideally including time, but potentially less precise, e.g. month) when the organism was present
• Who: the person (ideally) or organisation, that recorded (or determined) the organism

Example Biological Record

Here is an example of the same biological record from both iRecord and the NBN Atlas.

Each of the main attributes can also vary in resolution, with more precise values being more useful. See https://biologicalrecording.co.uk/recordresolution/ for how resolution can vary for:

• What: e.g. species or genus
• Where: e.g. 8-figure or 4-figure grid reference (preferably with site name as well to help detect errors)
• When: e.g. date or year
• Who: e.g. individual or recording group

Additional data attributes make a biological record, or species occurrence record, more useful. In particular:

• Why: a reason that the organism was at the location at that time (e.g. breeding, roosting, feeding)
• How many: some measure of abundance (e.g. number of individuals, percentage cover)
• How: the method that was used to generate the record (e.g. visual observation, light-trap, sound-recording, DNA)

Other important attributes potentially include life stage, sex, habitat, behaviour, etc. See https://biologicalrecording.co.uk/dataquality/ for examples. 

How to Share Biological Records

For people who record across multiple taxonomic groups we'd recommend that you submit your data to iRecord, which is well set up for passing data on to those who need it. You can easily add a single record or a list of records. Alternatively, you can send your records direct to the various taxa-based National Schemes and Societies. As PSLers we can all contribute a wealth of valuable data to aid conservation in this country simply by submitting as many of our records as possible so that they get to whoever needs them.

^*Images reproduced with permission from Biological Recording Company © Keiron Derek Brown

28 July 2024

There are more than 75,000 species on the Pan-species Listing (PSL), but if you'd really like to download this for any reason it's easy to do! Just go to the checklist and click on the green download button on the right side.

Probably more useful is that you can download just a taxa group rather than the entire checklist, so just the Orchids, or all the Vascular Plants, for example.

Note that you can also download your own species or family lists, or your targets or blockers, or indeed download from any other person's list. Just look for the green download button again when you are viewing the list you wish to download.

28 June 2024

Exciting news: BUBO and PSL will be at the Global Birdfair next month! Visit us at the Pan-species Listing stand in the Kestrel marquee to find out more about pan-species listing, meet some of the people behind it, have a go at the id quiz, get help with species identifications, join us on mini-bioblitz sessions around the Lyndon Top site, ask questions about the PSL or BUBO Listing websites, enter your own sightings, and watch the cumulative Global Birdfair PSL list live on screen. Become a super-naturalist with PSL!

We will be heading out for mini-bioblitzes at 11am and 2pm each day. To join us, just come to the stand in time for any session.

If you are at the Birdfair on any of the three days then your sightings can contribute to the overall PSL list:

• login to the PSL website
• create your own Birdfair PSL list:
  • the Location name is "Global Birdfair (Rutland Water)"
  • select Year list so that we can compare with future years!
  • hit Create
• enter anything that you see whilst at the Birdfair or the wider Rutland Water reservoir during the three days
  • either use Batch Edit or the individual Add Species options
• or just pop along and tell us your sightings and we'll add them to a PSL group list
• follow the overall list at panspecieslisting.com/birdfair2024
• after the Birdfair we will add all sightings to iRecord, so they will be made as useful as possible to the biological recording community

We would love some help at the Birdfair from any fellow PSLers. If you would like to volunteer to join us on the stand or for our bioblitz sessions then please Contact Us.