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The technical forum of the NBN Trust for use by the Network. It includes discussions and announcements on the NBN Atlas, Recorder 6 and Indicia |
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I notice on the homepage that the Atlas says it has 185,308 Species. This seems impressively large as the UKSI appears to contain only about 113,000 recommended Scientific Names, which includes a lot of genus only entries. Does the Atlas really contain records for 185,308 species?
These kinds of stats are usually very hard to calculate - I'm always struggling to produce meaningful statistics when someone asks "How many species are in the UK?" This is mainly because the UKSI contains some 'exotics' (species that were added on international convention checklists) and enquirers are usually unsure whether they want to include ranks like subspecies or species-level aggregates. The following page goes some way to illustrating the issue and providing some statistics:
http://nbn-sd-dev.nhm.ac.uk/stats.php
My guess is that the Atlas is including all ranks so should be calling them 'taxa', not 'species', but if they also include species from other sources then we should talk about how these are managed.
Maybe confused by the inclusion of images as occurrences as well?: https://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=6851
Thanks for your posts on this topic. We are looking into the issue of the homepage stats and will update this thread once we have more information on this.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Hello All,
Our developers have been working on the issue with regards to the stats being misleading in particular the species count and this has now been rectified and the homepage does now show the correct stats.
Apologies for this confusion and thank you for bearing with us while we resolved this matter.
Kind Regards
Sarah
Hi Sarah
How exactly is it coming to the count of 113,981 species? This isn't a figure I recognise.
Thanks,
Chris R.
Also, when you hit "Explore the NBN Atlas" it brings up 3,669,093 records and the filter on the left says it shows "Species (270,304)". How is this possible if there are fewer species in total in the taxonomy? Is it just giving you a number for the different names used in the list? Obviously, a count of names <> a count of species because species can have multiple names.
EDIT: OK, so this is saying there are 270,000 records in the DB which are at species rank? Or ... something else? And if so, then why are there 2,810,000 records in the same DB holding localities ... wouldn't these also have species attached to them?
Also, on the left why are there these arbitrary groups of organisms like "Asco's", "Coots, cranes & rails" and "Carnivores" ... who has set them up and why have they been selected as being meaningful. Who is "Asco" anyway and what does he possess? On a serious note (not just grammar pedantry) is it "Ascomycetes"?
...and on the homepage, why does it say 0 data partners?
Thanks again for your comments and for also spotting the issues regarding the data partners, datasets etc. This has been fed back and work is being done to investigate what is happening here. Sarah
Just noticed another group - "Basidio's" ... again a confusing abbreviation with incorrect use of the apostrophe.
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