Fascination of Plants Day 2015

CEH scientists were among those taking part in an event at Harcourt Arboretum in Oxfordshire this weekend staged as part of the worldwide Fascination of Plants Day 2015. Insect interactions with different plants and wildflowers were high on the agenda as our experts led guided walks, answered questions and revealed the contents of a moth trap set up for the event.

Moth and butterfly ecologist Dr Marc Botham began proceedings when he opened the moth trap to fascinated onlookers.

Moths about to be revealed @MarcBotham @CEHScienceNews pic.twitter.com/vR7SUEHMCp

— Helen Roy (@UKLadybirds) May 16, 2015

Dr Marc Botham (kneeling) opened a moth trap at the event

Although Marc himself was a little disappointed with the number and variety of species caught during a cooler than average May night, there were still plenty to keep the crowd interested, with poplar hawk moths particularly numerous. 

Many of the people got to hold some of the still docile moths for the first time and see up close the amazing colours and markings.

Next up was the first of the day's ladybirds walks, led by entomologist Dr Helen Roy, who taught some of the younger participants the art of using a sweep net and showed them how to input their discoveries into the Ladybird Survey app.

A number of pine ladybirds were found on both pine and hawthorn trees in the woodland. On a day when ladybirds were actually quite scarce, 14-spot and 7-spot ladybirds were also spotted by some of the more eagle-eyed participants.

Dr Oli Pescott, a botanist at CEH, led plant and wildflower walks during the day. As well as pointing out much of what was in bloom around the arboretum, Oli revealed fascinating facts, identification tips, similarities between species and the importance of different plants for insect interactions.

The cuckooflower or Lady's smock (Cardamine pratensis), a primary
larval food plant of the Orange tip butterfly

Comparing characteristics of thyme-leaved speedwell (left) and
germander speedwell.

Dog's mercury (Mercurialis perennis) - don't eat it! A
woodland plant which is highly poisonous.

This is the third international Fascination of Plants Day. Events are being held worldwide with the aim of getting people enthused by plants and their importance for the environment, food production, agriculture, as well as the sustainable production of goods such as timber, chemicals, pharmaceuticals etc.

@CEHScienceNews enjoying a day of natural history with visitors at Harcourt Arboretum pic.twitter.com/LXNuj5I3Gr

— Helen Roy (@UKLadybirds) May 16, 2015

As well as CEH, other organisations taking part at the Harcourt Arboretum event included the University of Oxford, the Wildlife Trusts, the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre, and the RSPB.

Paulette Burns

Further information

Marc, Oli and Helen all work closely with the Biological Records Centre within CEH.

Fascination of Plants Day 2015 official website

New Atlas of British & Irish Bryophytes

A new atlas of British and Irish bryophytes is published this month. Bryophytes is the collective term for mosses, hornworts and liverworts, spore-producing, rather than seed-producing, plants without flowers. The British Isles support a rich and geographically diverse flora of bryophytes with more than 1000 native species (four hornworts, 298 liverworts and 767 mosses) currently known. Fifty-nine new species have been discovered in the last 20 years.

See our news story for more information about the atlas but we're taking the opportunity to highlight some great images below of some of the species it features.

Philonotis fontana. Photo by Jonathan Sleath

Aulacomnium androgynum. Photo by Jonathan Sleath

Cololejeunea minutissima. Photo by Jonathan Sleath

Distribution map of Ulota phyllantha

Cryphaea heteromalla. Photo by Jonathan Sleath

Frullania dilatata. Photo by Jonathan Sleath

Related links

CEH news: New atlas reveals spread of British bryophytes in response to cleaner air

Full reference: Blockeel, T L, Bosanquet, S D S, Hill, M O and Preston, C D (2014). Atlas of British & Irish Bryophytes. Pisces Publications, Newbury.

The atlas can be ordered via all good bookshops or purchased directly from Nature Bureau

A weekend at Birdfair

CEH's Biological Records Centre (BRC) teamed up with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) this weekend (15-17 August 2014) to co-host a stand at the hugely popular Birdfair annual event at Rutland. Birdfair attracts more than 20,000 wildlife enthusiasts of all ages and from many different countries and was an ideal venue to encourage more people to record their wildlife sightings. Records submitted through BRC's apps and iRecord website are used in research by CEH scientists and colleagues.

Just finishing off #Birdfair stand with @BSBIbotany ready for tomorrow. Looks fab. @__BRC__ @CEHScienceNews pic.twitter.com/zTIxKF09Vw
— Michael Pocock (@mjopocock) August 14, 2014

Visitors were able to see how easy it is to use BRC's range of recording apps, such as iRecord Ladybirds and iRecord Butterflies (and get an exciting sneak preview of the forthcoming grasshopper app!). It was also great to see interest in the forthcoming National Plant Monitoring Scheme, which involves both CEH and BSBI. 

A number of CEH scientists were in attendance to chat about their work and about the importance of recording wildlife...

It's getting busy today at #Birdfair with @___BRC___ and @BSBIbotany. Lots of enthusiasm for recording wildlife. pic.twitter.com/M6bcOFIuzZ
— Michael Pocock (@mjopocock) August 15, 2014

Every wildlife record is valuable. Find out the story of "record, research, respond" at #BIRDFAIR with @___BRC___ and @BSBIbotany
— Michael Pocock (@mjopocock) August 16, 2014

...as well as enjoy the efforts of our stand partners...

@BSBIbotany informative bird fair stand - included the most beautiful "test" I have ever seen - name the 10 meadow plants (flowering)
— Helen Roy (@UKLadybirds) August 17, 2014

...and discover some of the other great research and volunteer efforts being highlighted at the show...

If you're at the #Birdfair today, pop by the @_BTO stand to talk BBS or introduce yourself if you already take part. pic.twitter.com/uqnllwC17W
— Sarah (@harris_sjh) August 17, 2014

Thanks to everyone who took the time to pop by and have a chat! We hope you had a great show and continue to enjoy viewing (and recording!) wildlife.

.Another fab day @BirdfairRutland meeting lots more lovely wildlife people with @mjopocock @___BRC___ @CEHScienceNews pic.twitter.com/QvSt2Tdj8W
— BSBI (@BSBIbotany) August 16, 2014

So many people dropped in to our @BirdfairRutland stand! @sacrevert very busy all day :-) @CEHScienceNews @___BRC___ pic.twitter.com/sfKUKQ254J
— BSBI (@BSBIbotany) August 19, 2014

There's an app for that...

 

Related links

 

Smartphone apps for citizen science and environmental recording

When and how to use citizen science: best practice guides from CEH

Posted by Paulette Burns, Media Coordinator

Reflections on #BRC50

For those who couldn't attend the BRC 50th anniversary celebrations in June 2014, our Storify articles gather most of the tweets and photos from the event. Not quite the same as being there, but at least it gives a flavour of the atmosphere and talks! Many thanks to all who attended and who helped to make it such a memorable event.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three (Field Trip to Salisbury Plain)

And finally, some birthday wishes from the other side of the world!

Happy birthday @___BRC___ ,the UK centre for recording species!The BRC supports volunteers on more than 80 #citizenscience projects #BRC50
— Earthwatch Australia (@Earthwatch_Aus) July 1, 2014

More links

There are a few more #BRC50 photos in our Flickr album

You can freely download the PDF of the BRC50 booklet.


Posted by Paulette Burns

50 years of the Biological Records Centre

You can see a complete version of this infographic in the booklet Celebrating 50 years of the Biological Records Centre, available as a PDF (6.6mb).

Read more about the history of BRC in our blog post, and news of its anniversary symposium in Bath.

The Biological Records Centre is 50 years old!

This year the Biological Records Centre (BRC), based within the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, celebrates its 50th anniversary. A celebratory symposium is being held in Bath this week, and birthday cake will be eaten by past and present staff members, as well as a wide range of people who have been associated with BRC over the last five decades.

It's a good time to look back at why the Biological Records Centre came into existence, and why it is still relevant today.

A rich history of biological recording

In the late 17th century the Catalogus Plantarum Angliae was published. Written by Essex
naturalist John Ray, it was effectively the first catalogue of English plants, drawing on observations from his friends. By the 18th century natural history societies had begun to form across the country which focused on species identification and documenting their distribution. These societies attracted a wide range of members ranging from the self-educated to the academically qualified, a mix that continues to this day.

Plants and data processing 

During the first half of the 20th century there were several attempts at creating a national overview of British species, particularly for plants. Plans for a national plant atlas were published in 1940 but delayed by World War Two. Post-war, both the British Association (in 1947) and the Botanical Society of the British Isles conference (in 1950) resolved to map British (and Irish) species and finally, in 1954, the BSBI’s Atlas of the British Flora project was launched with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, and later from the then recently established Nature Conservancy,

Former head of BRC Paul Harding commented recently:

“The atlas (of the British Flora) aimed to record, and map, each species of vascular plant in the 10km squares of the Ordnance Survey National Grid. Perhaps the most critical aspect of the project was the adoption of data processing equipment using punched cards. This enabled 1.5 million records to be sorted and mapped mechanically and the use of information technology became integral to biological recording.”

An international impact on biological recording

Building on the Plant atlas and the mapping skills developed, the Biological Records Centre was established at Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire in 1964, with Franklyn Perring as its head. Over the years BRC has grown, and moved (to Wallingford, Oxfordshire in 2008), and its work has had, and continues to have, an international impact on biological recording.

Professor William Sutherland, the Miriam Rothschild Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge recently wrote:

“The BRC has been central to much of UK conservation practice and research. The work on climate change impacts on distribution patterns is especially well known. The detailed distribution information means the BRC is central to much of the routine conservation practice in determining priorities and assessing possible threats. The BRC has also been fundamental to the National Biodiversity Network Gateway, an ambitious plan to bring together the main sources of UK biodiversity information.”

Current priorities

Looking forward, Dr David Roy, the current head of BRC, told me that current BRC priorities include:

• Maintaining existing capacity for recording species across a broad range of taxonomic groups to provide the evidence needed to tackle ongoing environmental issues.
• Sustaining partnerships with expert naturalists to help this capacity to grow and adapt, thus increasing the value of biological recording for understanding environmental change.
• Making innovative use of technology and analytical methods, plus integration with other data sources on the ecology of species and the physical environment to enhance the value of recording data.

Happy Birthday BRC. We look forward to your 100th anniversary celebration in 2064!

Barnaby Smith, Media Relations Manager 


Related links

Biological Records Centre website

CEH News: Biological Records Centre, pioneer of citizen science, celebrates 50th anniversary 

Celebrating 50 years of the Biological Records Centre [PDF, 6.62mb]

The citizen science toolbox – a practical guide how and when to use citizen science

In this guest blog CEH’s Dr Michael Pocock explains why he has helped develop a new guide to Choosing and Using Citizen Science.

Citizen science is accelerating in its popularity as an approach to undertake scientific research and monitoring and for people to engage with science. This popularity can mean that some people see citizen science as the answer to any and every question or goal. However, citizen science is not a single approach – it is a diversity of approaches. To put it another way, citizen science is not a multitool – it is a whole tool box of individual techniques and approaches.

The new guide to choosing and using citizen science

Citizen science is a tool box of approaches, and it is important for people to explore the range of approaches, in other words to work out which citizen science ‘tool’ they could use for the task in hand – or indeed whether citizen science is unsuitable. But how do people work through the maze of all the possible approaches, from long-term to short-term projects, working with schools, the media, naturalists or local communities, using smartphone apps or forms sent by post? Hopefully our Guide, published today, will help.

It was not only us who realised that there was this need to help people explore the utility of citizen science. There has been huge enthusiasm in the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) about citizen science and so they commissioned us at CEH to produce a Guide to 'Choosing and Using Citizen Science', which is published today. Initially this was going to be a report for their own staff, but in talking to people about the project, we all quickly realised that many people outside of SEPA and CEH would really appreciate a user-friendly guide to the subject following from the enthusiasm for our Guide to Citizen Science  which presented best practice to running citizen science projects.

The central part of the guide is a handy flowchart helping people to explore citizen science options. This is backed up by thoughts on what needs to be considered before beginning a citizen science project. However, I think that the process of thinking carefully is far more important than the final answer from the flowchart – and I hope that those who use the guide will develop better thought-out citizen science projects. These will undoubtedly be more successful projects.

The guide to Choosing and Using Citizen Science is backed up by a comprehensive report. Within the report we also produced some case studies for SEPA as to how citizen science could be applied to address the problem of locating river barriers (old weirs, and so on, which restrict the migration of salmon) and monitoring water quality at a local site (The Seven Lochs Wetland Park in Glasgow). It was challenging to consider the different citizen science approaches that could be used to address these questions – and the final decision as to whether and how to use citizen science will come down to people actually developing these projects!

Citizen science in action during a wildlife survey

So, if you are wondering if citizen science is for you, then we hope that this guide will help. But, if you have decided to start a citizen science project, what then? I’d recommend referring to our best practice Guide to Citizen Science which we published in 2012 and has received a superb response from people across the world. Volunteer involvement in science has been going on for such a long time (the Biological Records Centre celebrates its 50th anniversary this year!), so citizen science has a long, successful history and surely will have an even richer, more diverse future.

________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Michael Pocock is an ecologist based in the Biological Records Centre at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. He leads several citizen science projects with the aim of collectively undertaking hypothesis-led research and is the co-leader of the long running Conker Tree Science project in which people are invited to help discover more about an invasive insect that is damaging horse-chestnut trees.

Michael is currently working on the Big Bumblebee Discovery, the first project in an exciting new programme, the Great EDF Energy experiment, a collaboration between the British Science Association and EDF Energy.

Additional information

CEH news story about the new guide and background research

Download the new guide

The Biological Records Centre - 50 years old in 2014

UK Butterfly monitoring – explaining the schemes and surveys

There’s been lots of coverage today of a new set of data on UK butterfly numbers. You may have seen headlines such as “Farmland butterflies bounce” back and “British farmland butterflies bounce back after 2013 summer, survey finds”.

The reports are based on a new release of data which was collected in 2013 as part of the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey (WCBS).

The WCBS is run by Butterfly Conservation, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH).

As today’s press release from Butterfly Conservation states “The annual survey (WCBS), running since 2009, counts butterflies in more than 850 randomly selected 1km-squares across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to assess the health of butterfly populations across the wider countryside rather than at specially managed hotspots such as nature reserves.” 

 

Common blue (photo by Ross Newham)

WCBS is part of the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring scheme (UKBMS), which has been running since 1976, and has a remit to monitors changes in the abundance of butterflies throughout the United Kingdom since 1976. Regular readers of this blog will already know how UKBMS data contributes to some of the biodiversity indicators which inform UK environmental policy making.

For those confused by the multiple butterfly surveys and schemes operated in the UK the following details may help.

• Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey, running since 2009, aims to more effectively monitor the changing abundance of widespread butterfly species across the general countryside.
• United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring scheme, running since 1976, is very effective at monitoring habitat specialist butterflies and lowland semi-natural habitats.

According to the UKBMS website, in the 37 years the scheme has operated, "Recorders have made around a quarter of a million weekly visits to more than 1,500 separate sites, walking over half a million kilometres and counting over 16.4 million butterflies!”  

The UKBMS 2013 results should be out in a few weeks time. The 2012 results were published on 26 March 2013.

All the butterfly surveys, as well as the majority of wildlife recording in the UK, principally rely on the efforts of volunteers so I’ll leave the last word to Kate Risely. Kate co-ordinates the Breeding Bird Survey butterfly surveyors at the BTO. She commented earlier, "These results demonstrate the value of large scale volunteer surveys for monitoring country-wide trends in butterfly numbers. Recording butterflies and birds at the same sites gives us a unique insight into the health of our countryside.”

Barnaby Smith, Media Relations Manager, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Update 20 February 2013

Links to CEH news stories about the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey

2013 results Farmland butterflies thrived in 2013
2012 results Grass-feeding butterflies defy 2012 deluge
2011 results Small Tortoiseshell decline highlighted in new study

Links to CEH news stories about the United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring scheme

The 2013 results will be published in a few weeks
2012 results Washout 2012 was the worst year for UK butterflies on record
2011 results Record-breaking 2011 Spring helped some of the UK's rarer butterflies
2010 results Rare butterflies show signs of recovery
2009 results Fears grow for some of Britain's rarest butterflies
2008 results UK butterfly numbers fall to new low
2007 results Butterflies at record low after wet summer of 2007

United Kingdom Butterfly Monitoring scheme data and results

Key findings including annual, 10-year and long-term (series) trends for 56 species
Reports and publications
Obtaining data

Biodiversity indicators and the Biological Records Centre

The 2013 update to the UK Biodiversity Indicators has just been published on the JNCC website.
 
CEH scientists working within the Biological Records Centre contribute to several of the indicators, building on our wealth of knowledge and links to most of the UK's wildlife recording schemes. In particular, for 2013, our scientists have contributed to development of the new index on the status of priority species (C4a).

Dr Nick Isaac of CEH explains more:

"The new indicator C4a uses data from national surveys, such as the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. The index provides an annual summary of the abundance of 210 mammal, bird, butterfly and moth species, all of which have been identified as priorities for the four national conservation agencies. This property makes this index much more sensitive than the old C4, in which species were categorised as declining, stable or increasing based on expert opinion."

"In addition, we also produced a supplementary index based on distribution data. These 'biological records' are not collected in a standardised way, which makes the data extremely noisy and liable to produce biased estimates of species trends. Within the Biological Records Centre, we've invested heavily in trying to understand this bias, and to extract a meaningful signal of change from the noise in the data. This investment has now paid off, because we're now able to report on the status of  taxonomic groups, such as bees, that lack standardised monitoring schemes."

"Both the abundance and distribution-based indicators show a decline of 50-60% since 1970, reinforcing the message that conservation agencies have their work cut out to prevent more species from going extinct."

More details of the C4a indicator can be found in the technical report, "Status of threatened species - status of priority species".

Other UK biodiversity indicators with CEH involvement include:

• C6. Insects of the wider countryside (butterflies) population (data from CEH's joint stewardship of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme with Butterfly Conservation)

• C2. Habitat Connectivity (Countryside Survey data)

• B6. Pressure from Invasive species (reflecting our work with the National Biodiversity Network)

• B5. Pressure from Pollution

• C7. Plants of the wider countryside (data from CEH's Countryside Survey)

CEH science also played a key role in the 2011 National Ecosystem Assessment, which is the basis of Indicator D2. Biodiversity and ecosystem services (terrestrial).

Additional information

Biological Records Centre

Staff page of Dr Nick Isaac, CEH