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