Chris has fixed the issue: "WRT iRecord - when they are happy that the huge update from early 2025 to Jan 2026 has settled I plan to get them to do a small, incremental update of all the changes since they did the update in January"

Thanks David, I have chatted with the iRecord team and they are currently just dealing with some issues relating to a technical decision made last year, which the new update has exacerbated. Nothing bad but it has finally caught up with the team and they are working hard to convert some data to the new way of doing things :)

As always, "just updating the taxonomy" is actually a bigger job than it sounds because it has knock-ons to the biological records behind the scenes - and there's a lot of records these days :D

We've established that a smaller ad-hoc update is needed but it will just need to slot in after the issues triggered by the new one have been sorted out. Ongoing this shouldn't be a problem :)

In NBN Atlas
- the 'preferred' Species is still shown as 'Aeshna isoceles' when 'Isoaeschna isoceles' was supplied and the Genus is bizarrely shown separately as 'Anaciaeschna' when it should be 'Isoaeschna'.
- the 'preferred' Common Name is now shown as 'Norfolk Aeshna', which isn't correct. 'Norfolk Hawker' should continue to be used. I can't see how I could have checked this in the Sandbox. How is the preferred Common Name flagged?
Example: https://records.nbnatlas.org/occurrence … b8e15fd7fe

In iRecord
- records arriving from iNaturalist (which adopted the new genus 'Isoaeschna' earlier without the use of UKSI) imported before the recent UKSI update on 26/05/2026 still show 'Aeshna isoceles' (bad) and 'Norfolk Hawker' (good).
Example: https://irecord.org.uk/record-details/v … d=44301281

- records arriving from iNaturalist after the UKSI update show 'Isoaeschna isoceles' (good) and 'Norfolk Aeshna' (bad).
Example: https://irecord.org.uk/record-details/v … d=52704897

- records from all non-iNat sources of all ages show 'Isoaeschna isoceles' (good) and 'Norfolk Aeshna' (bad).
Example: https://irecord.org.uk/record-details/v … d=52870616

Let me know if I can help to resolve this ASAP.

Sadly, I'm still unable to update the NHM UK Species version without the technical staff helping so it gets done very sporadically. I'm working with them to get full control of that database but until then the Sandbox is always updated within days (usually minutes) of me updating the Master Database here.

Chris R.

Please review the following recommendations, that I am making based on searches at https://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/ … ies/search :
- Create genus Isoaeschna which I cannot find in UKSI. The genus is monospecific, having been devised for this species.
- Promote (TVK=NHMSYS0021775230) Isoaeschna isoceles to preferred and add the authority.
- Demote (TVK=NHMSYS0021009091) Anaciaeschna isoceles (Müller, 1767) to junior synonym.
- Demote (TVK=NHMSYS0021689820) Aeshna isoceles to junior synonym. This is on your Sandbox site (created back in Nov 2023 during the previous rename attempt) and on the NBN site but I cannot find it in the 'main' UKSI search and it appears never to have made it to iRecord in two years. I don't understand this. If necessary recreate it, as many people have been using this name form after Anaciaeschna was discredited.
- Decide on what should happen in UKSI to (orgKey=NBNORG0000109076) genus Anaciaeschna  - which still exists for foreign species but we no longer need in the UK. I'm guessing that it should remain in the system.

If I'm wrong about any of this please check back with me as I need to understand better!
Please let me know when this is live and I'll keep an eye open for it in iRecord. The changes will also need to reach NBN Atlas and GBIF in due course.