1 Reply by brianmiller

  • brianmiller
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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

Hi All,

I probably have an obvious one here but has caused me lots of confusion since transfering in the past recorder 3 data to R2K2 and now 6.

Where should it be recorded that, for example, a bird is breeding? My original thought was in the obs measurement qualifier. However what if you have the fact that it is a male or a pair also? You can not record both parts in the qualifier unless you add the joint term (which is not ideal in my mind) to the term list.

So, should it go in the Obs Record Type instead, so the qualifier can still have male or pair etc?

How do others handle this one please?

Thanks

Brian

Brian Miller
(Conservation Officer (Buckinghamshire), BBOWT)

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2 Reply by Rob B

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

This is where the discussion on how to export and transfer term lists would be extremely useful. However, what we have done is allow volunteers to edit the measurment qualifier to reflect the record they are digitising. A good example of such a record with a large amount of embedded data are the Seasonal Reserve Warden's systematic bird lists.

Correspondingly they will use a single species recording card that can be used for multiple instances of the same species. See the uploaded screen shot, Multiple instances.

Of course if you use an intermediate step between data transfers, then you may be able to add some other qualifiers which best reflect the record, then once the import wizard recognises them, they will be added to the list within  R6.

Trust this makes sense, oh, and what do other people do?

3 Reply by brianmiller

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

Rob,

Thanks for the reply.

So if I understand, what you would do is combine and add the male and breeding in the term list for the measurement qualifier (Male Breeding, or Pair Breeding etc)?

In terms of the multiple instances, yes this would work with different instances such as a pair and a nest and we would certainly do as you have done, where the instances are associated to the same species. However, I do not see this working with Pair or Male and Breeding, as it could lead to confusion in numbers when reporting.

Is this what others do or any other examples?

Brian

Brian Miller
(Conservation Officer (Buckinghamshire), BBOWT)

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4 Reply by Rob B

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

Yes, it's an area that has large potential for getting unwieldy so have emphasied that terms should only be added once no other option is available. What is in our favour here is that the examples I used above use standard recording terms, so we found that although many new terms were added early in the project, we took a review & have thus standardised how records are digitised. Also note here that when these new terms were added by us, a definition went into the that box to firmly denote the circumstances that new term is used

So, for example: "Breeding Pair" = 1 male & 1 female
or "Abandoned Nests "= Previous nest sites discarded by their former occupants

Am always interested in how other folk do this, & think that this forum is a godsend compared with how things were even a couple of years ago!

Cheers now, Rob.

5 Reply by johnvanbreda

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

Have you thought about separating this information into 2 measurements.   The abundance measurement could contain the word Pair in the qualifier, then you could tag the occurrence as 'breeding' with a second measurement.  Not sure how exactly you'd want to store this in a measurement, but at least it separates the data out so makes it easier to use.

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

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6 Reply by brianmiller

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

John,

Thanks for the reply. Not sure how I would 'tag' the record with a second measurement to be honest without potentially causing the confusion of the number of occurrences, unless of course the 'tagged' measurement had an abundance of 0...?

Cheers

Brian

Brian Miller
(Conservation Officer (Buckinghamshire), BBOWT)

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7 Reply by Rob B

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

One of the fundamental reasons that we have taken this approach is that in the past, most abundance data outwith of term lists would be entered under the sample or record comment field. R2K transfer have frequently shown that too much free text added gets corrupted, thus effectively deleting that data.

By stipulating that we now have things like 'Breeding Pair' or 'Caterpillar' , we have reduced the data-entry time and improved accuracy to reflect the source data, however the reporting process has been complicated a touch. Maybe we'll get some form of xml that can avoid having to include all the blank abundance columns some day!

Perhaps a topic for a new thread, but how do people enter negative results. I'm specifically thinking about water vole surveys we've seen, where the methodology turns up no records? In these cases, we do put something into the sample comment which illustrates this & then use the 'Zero abundance' within the complex filter.

8 Reply by charlesroper

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Re: Where to put that a sp is breeding

We've got terms for 'breeding pair' and suchlike (I can send a list of all our terms if you like? We have legacy data taken from R3, so it's quite a long list of some rather obscure terms). We make the assumption that a breeding pair with an abudance of 1 actually equals an abudance of 2. This we make clear within the notes field of the term.

With regards to negative results, you enter an occurrence as normal, but type 0 as the abundance. Recorder automatically picks this up as a 'zero abundance' record and flags it as such in the TAXON_OCCURRENCE table (it applies a value of TRUE in the ZERO_ABUNDANCE column). Funnily enough, we too were doing this for water vole and otter records. Our water vole surveyor was going out and surveying sites in response to 'sightings' by the public. If she found no signs, the record would go in with a zero abundance to register the fact that she had been looking for something, but not found it.

Charles

Charles Roper
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