1

Re: Common centaury extinct?

The list JNCC collation of taxon designations includes Centaurium erythraea with the status RedList_GB_Pre94:EX.

Any chance this could be corrected please.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

2

Re: Common centaury extinct?

Further to this item. I am using a query which returns all occurences at a given location or its sub-sites (location keys "DSS006280000000V", "DSS006280000000W", "DSS006280000000X") of all taxa with statuses which appear in my custom made taxon designation set (key 'DSS0062800000001').

The query looks like this:
SELECT DISTINCT INDEX_TAXON_NAME.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY AS TLIK, INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME AS [Scientific name], INDEX_TAXON_NAME.COMMON_NAME AS [Common name], INDEX_TAXON_NAME.SORT_ORDER
FROM ((INDEX_TAXON_NAME AS INDEX_TAXON_NAME_1 INNER JOIN (((TAXON_OCCURRENCE INNER JOIN SAMPLE ON TAXON_OCCURRENCE.SAMPLE_KEY = SAMPLE.SAMPLE_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_DETERMINATION ON TAXON_OCCURRENCE.TAXON_OCCURRENCE_KEY = TAXON_DETERMINATION.TAXON_OCCURRENCE_KEY) INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME ON TAXON_DETERMINATION.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME_1.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = INDEX_TAXON_NAME.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_DESIGNATION ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME_1.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = TAXON_DESIGNATION.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN Taxon_Designation_Set_Item ON TAXON_DESIGNATION.TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE_KEY = Taxon_Designation_Set_Item.Taxon_Designation_Type_Key
WHERE (((SAMPLE.LOCATION_KEY) In ("DSS006280000000V", "DSS006280000000W", "DSS006280000000X")) AND ((TAXON_DETERMINATION.PREFERRED)=Yes) AND ((Taxon_Designation_Set_Item.Taxon_Designation_Set_Key)='DSS0062800000001'))
ORDER BY INDEX_TAXON_NAME.SORT_ORDER;

This query consistently returns Centaurium erythraea, even though RedList_GB_Pre94:EX (the only status attched to this taxon as far as I can tell) does not appear in my custom designation set.

What is wrong with my query?

And yes I have rebuilt the indeces.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

3

Re: Common centaury extinct?

My guess is this problem harks back to an update of the Recorder 3 Species dictionary which deleted the entry for Centaurium erythraea and renamed an obscure (extinct?) subspecies as the species, but did not alter any of the supplementary data, hence reporting the species as extinct - this problem was over 15 years ago, so I'm surprised this has occurred!

Craig
Staffs Ecological Record

Craig Slawson
Staffordshire Ecological Record

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

A year later and it's still extinct?

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

charliebarnes wrote:

A year later and it's still extinct?

Well anyone who has seen Jurassic park knows how difficult it is to resurrect an extinct species.

And I too like Craig remember the renaming of the species in R3.4. At the same update all my notables became extinct syanothropes.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Bumping this one to be sure you have seen it Chris. Nearly three years after my original post it is still apparently extinct. Apart of course from the five times I have recorded it this year (and the several thousand records on the gateway).

Funnily enough, the Gateway also lists it as pre 1994 extinct, despite holding all those post 1994 records of it.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Hi Rob ... Hmm, yes for an 'extinct' species it does seem to be very common ;)   I will have a look 'afresh' and see why this might be happening.

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

I would be willing to bet that it is at least partly the fault of the Rec3.3 list again.
Looking in the taxon dictionary the rec 3 list has three child taxa of C. erythraea. Two are hybrids (which as we have discussed before, are not really children in the taxonomic sense and the third is a variety var capitatum. Interestingly this variety has C. erythraea listed as one of its synonyms. Not quite clear how a taxon can be a distinct entity at the same time as being synonymous, unless there is only one variety, but there you have it.

However that doesn't alter the fact that it appears in the JNCC list as extinct.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

OK, I think I know what has happened ... but not how to fix it! The problem stems from a species called Broad-leaved Centaury" (Centaurium latifolium), which was declared extinct in the 1984 Red Data Book. But this species was later demoted to a synonym of Common Centaury (Centaurium erythraea) and for some reason this has led to the status being wrongly carried over.

I will investigate how it has happened and then see what I can do about it, but it does highlight the problems of using statuses because they are subject to revision. :)

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Not sure I follow you Chris.

We have to use statuses and we accept the difficulties inherent in their change. The problem is with the synonymy surely.

If there was considered to be (pre 84) an entity called C. latifolia which was considered to be extinct, but it was later decided that this entity was not in fact a species, but fell within C. erythraea, then it should have been demoted to a subspecies or more likely a variety, not made synonymous.

The problem I have is that, even though we explicitly exclude the pre-84 red list statuses from our reports and queries, we cannot apparently rid ourselves of this non-notable taxon, except by post processing the output from recorder. This is because all our queries have to be designed to pick up all the synonyms.

In fact the solution we have adopted is to have a local-non-notable status which we apply to all such taxa which report anomalously. All our queries therefore need to exclude all taxa with this status. This does however represent just one more thing we have to bear in mind when writing already complex queries.

Or that's how it seems to me anyway.

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Hi Rob

Just a quick update - Mike Weideli is having a look into this from the Recorder side and will report back to me when he has more news.

From what I understand, the synonymy was fine - Centaurium latifolium was thought to have been a distinct species that had become extinct but later it was decided that it wasn't a separate species or even a subspecies or variety of C.erythraea, it was just C.erythraea. The taxon-concept had changed completely and, as such, the designation can't be transferred from one entity to the other, following the synonymy. Any record for C.laterifolia should be applied to C.erythraea but the designation was made in error so it needs to be ignored.

I think that it might not be wise to edit the JNCC list but Steve and Mike were talking about using a date on the designation to filter for only those designations that are still valid. But bear with us and I will report back when we have the best solution :)

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

In looking at the JNCC list in the Taxon_designation table outside Recorder you do need to take into Account the date_to field. If this is not null then the designation doesn't  apply. Up to Dictionary 0000000Y it looks like the NameServer links were causing table Index_Taxon_Designation to pick up  Centaurium erythraea from the entry for  Centaurium latifolium,  but as far as I can see this is fixed in Dictionary 00000010 - does anyone know different ? .

Mike Weideli

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Thanks Mike, that clarifies matters. I hadn't considered that the date_to field might make a difference. I am just checking whether Recorder 6 reports this correctly now. I will have to go back and check all of my xml reprts and user functions to check that we have applied them correctly.

Consider this one fixed then Chris

Rob Large
Wildlife Sites Officer
Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre

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Re: Common centaury extinct?

Great news - thanks Mike - and I didn't even have to change the data :)

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)