Latest groups added to Pan Species Listing checklist

So far, the Pan Species Listing checklist includes the following groups:
Butterflies
Dragonflies
Orthopteroids (grasshoppers and allies)
Mammals
Reptiles
Amphibians
Fish
Moths
Finally, we have started adding plants, with the first batch being the 'monocots' (including orchids, grasses and related plants).

We're going to keep adding more groups regularly until there's a fairly complete list up there for the combined UK, Ireland, Isle of Man + Channel Islands. We'll try to remember to announce new groups here as we add them.

Worth a quick acknowledgement here to Chris Raper who manages the UK Species Inventory for the Natural History Museum. The UKSI is the main source for the PSL checklist on BUBO. It's a mighty undertaking and Chris does a great job in keeping it roughly up to date, but it's a never-ending task. We know various new species are missing, or names needs tweaking. Keep letting us know, and we'll communicate these back in a way that's hopefully fairly efficient for UKSI to be updated.

Enjoy!

Andy, do you want users to report species-specific issues (e.g. missing English names) to you (on a thread here / via email) or will this just be annoying at this stage?

Let me know any missing species, but not missing English names. I'll tackle those at source in bulk in due course. Thanks.

Not a new group yet, but Feral Sheep added, on the basis of the St Kilda flocks

Next group added - about 4,700 dicotyledons (i.e. most of the flowering plants). There will still be some incorrect English names, and many of the microspecies (e.g. of dandelions and brambles) will still be missing. We also still have to complete our plans for plant hybrids. But plenty for people to be playing with for now.

Another botanical update for the BUBO Pan Species Lists - ferns, horsetails, clubmosses and conifers now added. We've also added a bunch of 'microspecies' of brambles, dandelions and hawkweeds which were previously missing. For info, we're also currently looking at a batch of stable plant hybrids for addition - coming in due course.

All Hymenoptera now added to BUBO Pan Species Lists - i.e. bees, wasps, ants and sawflies. Over 8,000 species involved.

All UK beetles (Coleoptera) also now added to BUBO Listing Pan-species Lists - over 4,000 species available

Andy, have enjoyed entering my insect data but wondering why you have grouped, say, Caddis with "other Insect Groups" when there are over 200 species, yet Bristletails with just a handful of species are separated. Same for Neuroperids, Mayflies, etc.
 

Good question and I agree it's a bit odd looking. These are the groups that were originally set up for the main PSL website (psl.brc.ac.uk) so we're starting out by staying consistent with that. In a little while we want to refine into smaller groups though, so those separate insect orders will become more visible.

On Dave’s specific question about three-tailed bristletails, the reason they get their own grouping is that they’re a one of those species-poor ancient branches like monotremes and ratites. They’re only very distantly related to all other insect orders, to the extent that there is a debate about whether they are actually insects at all.

Hi Andy
When I am out with the Norfolk Flora Group we record using the Stace 4 (New Flora of the British Isles, Clive Stace 4th Ed, 2019) plant names.  I understand that BUBO names are UKSI - are these likely to be updated at some stage?
Thanks for doing this by the way, its great to have all the tick lists together.

Marilyn

Hi Marilyn, glad you're enjoying it! As I understand it, moves are currently afoot to revamp the botanical lists in UKSI to bring them in line with those used by BSBI - which I presume is closer to Stace. I think this will happen early in 2024, at which time we'll update what we hold in BUBO.

Not sure if this is the right place to report this. Finally getting round to entering my moths. Entering Grass Rivulet, Perizoma albulata , which is present here in good numbers, the image showing is Black Arches, Lymantria monacha, which I have never seen! Nice image, but misleading.

Thanks John. Yes, these pics are drawn from Flickr as a bit of visual interest, and they're mostly (amazingly) correct, but occasionally they seem mislabelled. Nothing we can do about that really, sorry!

Cheers