Charles,

Many thanks Charles - much appreciated !!

Steve

It is undoubtedly a problem for taxonomic systems in general when this sort of arbitrary grouping happens.  They should, when possible, only represent the actual relationships between organisms, and not simply subjective groupings based one what some people do and do not have problems identifying.  Had a Bombus lucorum agg. been created to cope with field identification problems, we would be presented with a system that is in unequivocally incorrect and people would start to loose confidence in the dictionary.

However, this is not what was created, and as someone who supports the idea of being able to record certain bees as either lucorum or terrestris, I feel I ought to thanks Charles and try and provide an argument as to why I think it is a good idea.

Put simply, we feel at RECORD that our database will under-represent the species of Bombus lucorum and terrestris if we are not able to input records of workers of these species.  It would be impossible for every recorder to take specimens for identification by an expert and as a result we would either have take the risk of potentially inputting false records, or not inputting them at all.  Faced with this choice we have to take the latter option, which would result in useful data being lost.

I do understand the concerns you raise above, and I understand the cost associated with creating arbitrary groupings with the system, but there is also a cost to not doing it.  Where we at RECORD receive records of lucorum and terrestris workers we know we can trust, we will of course enter them into our database.  But it would be a shame to lose a lot of information about the presence of lucorum and terrestris, which is what will happen if the new taxon version key is removed.

We have reached these conclusions after detailed discussion with our local aculeates expert.  If anyone wishes to carry on the debate further, we will be happy to do so.

Many, if not most, LRCs receive data from MapMate users as MapMate exports and have to go through the process of importing this data into Recorder-6 and matching all the various fields (recorder name, location, species name, etc., etc.).

MapMate already has this aggregate species entry (Bombus lucorum/terrestris) and without a matching entry in Recorder it cannot be matched - exactly.  I am unsure who has supplied the Hymenoptera species names list for MapMate usage but I do know they use national experts to undertake this task and to keep them up to date.

Steve

There are two issues here, Steve - one, whether a state-of-the-art high-quality taxon dictionary should include pseudotaxa just because some people submit vague field records; and two, whether such records should have any resting-place other than the wastebin.  We can start World War 3 on the second point when I am less busy, but at the moment I am only interested in the first point.

I will not repeat my position, which is stated clearly in my first post.  No-one yet has countered any of the points I made (which I know are supported by far more eminent aculeate specialists than me - it is not a new issue at all).

If you are allowed a lucorum/terrestris aggregate, please tell me why I should not demand a taxon for 'yellow meadow things', 'little brown jobs', Englishman's Eagles (any soaring bird seen north of Perth), and an unlimited number of other such 'aggregates'.  As I said and will say again - that way madness lies.  And as Tom said, people will start to lose confidence in the dictionary.  I may have started off down that road already.

M.

Hi Murdo,

I share your worries about adding aggregate pseudotaxa, but I think a limited case can be made for them as a useful means for encouraging people to record wildlife. I think there is a distinction to be made between species that can be determined on external appearance, and species that need dissection or other microscopic examination. I also think it is only really an issue in groups that are relatively popular among general naturalists, and that consist largely of species that can be determined on external appearance.

So, macro-moths can mostly be identified on their external appearance, but there are a few well-known species groups that require dissection. People who don't want to dissect still like to be able to record what they have seen, so I think there is a good case for "Grey/Dark Dagger" and similar species aggregates that allow people to record these groups. One can argue that the resulting record is of limited value as a biological record, but as a way of encouraging people's enthusiasm for recording I think it is legitimate.

Similarly, given that bumblebees are popular, and that many can be identified from external characters (albeit only after close and careful examination in a lot of cases), I would argue that it is legitimate to have a 'field recording meta-aggregate' for workers of "Bombus lucorum agg. + Bombus terrestris" to allow enthusiasts to records bees that they haven't dissected or done DNA analysis on.

I would not wish to have aggregates for 'yellow meadow things' or 'little brown jobs' simply because some things are harder than others to identify, but I'm happy with the concept when based on a distinction between external characters and dissected characters. It reminds field recorders that there are species that can't be identified in the field, and in some cases this encourages people to go on and learn how to do the dissections etc. as their interest and experience grows.

Martin

B. lucorum sl and B. terrestris are, of course, easily recognisable if one bases records solely on queens and males. At BWARS, we will not accept B. terrestris/lucorum as a taxon as it fails to meet one of the basic requirements of a biological record: ie we can not answer the very basic question "What is it?".

It is, however, perfectly ok to lump these two sets of workers together when looking at functional guilds of bumbles in a field project on, say, pollination, and this is very regularly done. This aggregated data is then not passed on to BWARS, or if it is, it fails to get past our data validation tool and into our central data repository

Unfortunately, one can say absolutely nothing about the distribution of individual species based on vague taxa, and to attempt to do so would be pretty foolish. It is mentioned above that some species might be under-recorded if vague taxa are ignored... but conversely, other taxa might be over-recorded, and that can have serious implications. I note that you say Carl was validating data... but was he looking at just the data or was he looking at the specimens? Assuming he was just looking at a dataset then there will very probably be nothing to refer back to at all.

Whilst I agree with the general sentiment you express, I think maybe that is overstating the case somewhat. I may be mistaken but I think the collation and provision of high-quality data features more highly in every records centre I have been involved with. Both activities are important, but often they conflict as here.

As far as the main question of the thread is concerned. It seems to me it is the role of LRCs to hold ALL data they are given. It is one of the roles of county recorders, schemes and societies and suchlike specialists to advise LRCs of the validity of the data. Its most definately not for county recorders to dictate what data LRCs should hold or how they should hold it (or vice versa).

This forum/community includes both groups and each of us will determine how we wish to use our databases and what data we will allow into them, there is no harm in Recorder 6 allowing us to record the Englishman's Eagle if some of us wish it to. It's existence in the dictionary is of no importance whatever, the dictionary is not a bible it is a tool.

My well thumbed edition of the OED contains several thousand words which I have never used, nor would I. It even contains a few words which I would not choose to utter aloud. So far i have never written to protest their inclusion.

Perhaps however there is an argument for some Recorder 6 taxa not to be available to the NBN?

I've just updated to the latest version of the dictionary and this aggregate has been added to the List of Additional Names.

Surely this debate is a good example of why we have separate checklists in Recorder and not one master list? We also have ranks. I see that B. terrestris/lucorum is marked as SpAgg and, as mentioned, is in the List of Additional Names. It hasn't been added to the official Aculeates list Checklist of British Hymenoptera Aculeata (which I believe it maintained by BWARS). This makes it very easy to filter out when reporting or when passing on.

This discussion has made me think of a couple of related issues within Recorder.

In relation to bats, we have many records which are either Whiskered or Brandt's bat, virtually indistinguishable. The solution here has been to include the records in the database as the genus Myotis, with the comment field including the two possible species (alternatively there is a species aggregate for these two in the BCT list, but I am wary of using the non-preferred lists)

The other is with birds in the BAP 2007 list (& derived ones such as S41 etc) where several species aggregates (e.g. Alauda arvensis subsp. arvensis/scotica) have been created which have seem to have no purpose other than to make reporting awkward.

If I received records that related to a species aggregate as in the original topic, I would favour stepping back up to Genus with suitable comments, rather than causing potential reporting problems with Additional Names.

Good point Gordon, but does it not make better sense to use an aggregate (however dubious its taxonomic validity, where one is available which matches the original recorder's intent or capability and then add an additional (preferred) determination of the genus name?

Generally speaking putting information in a comment field is a good way of ensuring it is overlooked or at best very hard to extract. One of the advantages of recorder is that we can add multiple determinations and chose whichever is appropriate to our needs as the preferred one.

On reflection, is this not the essence of the verification process which is ideally perfomed for LRCs by their county recorders? We (the LRCs) make no claim to being experts in taxonomy, we are data custodians, so we rely on the expertise of others, not to tell us what we can hold, but how we should represent our holdings with respect especially to difficult taxa.