1 Reply by Darwyn Sumner (LERC)

  • Darwyn Sumner (LERC)
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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

Following a successful installation of Recorder 6.10 on Derek Lott's PC (N.B. Derek wrote and published the Staphylinidae bit of the Coleoptera checklist which Andrew Duff sent to NHM for incorporation into the current Recorder checklists) I've received the following message from him as he began importing spreadsheet records:

I put a batch of data into RECORDER after you left and it went in like a dream except for one rather fundamental problem arising from the formatting of scientific names in the beetle checklist, Binomial nomenclature has been abandoned by inserting subgeneric names in brackets into the binomial.
This is going to cause big problems to anybody uploading batches of data from spreadsheets, if they use binomial names, as most beetle recorders do, because it will lead to large scale mismatches of taxon names when running the import wizard. It will also make RECORDER6 output incompatible with other systems such as ISIS without some tedious reformatting of names. I hope that this formatting quirk in the beetle species checklist can be corrected quickly in RECORDER6 to avoid a lot of frustration for people endeavouring to use the system in the future.
I can get round this problem for now with minimum waste of time, if I can get hold on an electronic version of the beetle checklist, formatted as in RECORDER6. I need to import this into a spreadsheet to construct a dictionary file for reformatting the species names in my data. It will take less than a minute to strip out the subgeneric names and link the resulting binomials with the originals.
Can anybody help me to get hold of such a checklist as I have failed to find a way to do this from my copy of RECORDER6 or from the on-line NBN species dictionary?

Derek Lott

Now that we've got this super checklist in Recorder, Derek and his chums are key people to engage in Recorder recording.

I think I've managed to give Derek what he wanted (my brain wasn't working fully so Charles Roper kindly advised with the best methodology) so if I'm right Derek, who's a bit of a genius with spreadsheets, will be able to help his fellow Coleopterists out.
Derek's not likely to engage with this Forum so perhaps Charles Hussey of NHM would bring us up to date on this issue.

2 Reply by charlesroper

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  • charlesroper
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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

One thing to bear in mind when importing is that Recorder will remember the matches you make, so you'll only ever need to match once for each species.

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

charlesroper's Website

3 Reply by Darwyn Sumner (LERC)

  • Darwyn Sumner (LERC)
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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

From what I hear there are likely to be a goodly number of first-time Coleopterists. If you are one of those then Derek's list is going to save you a good deal of time. He's busy on it this morning and he says he's going to send it to me as soon as he's completed it. I shall place it onto this site as a downloadable file just as soon as he does so.

4 Reply by Darwyn Sumner (LERC)

  • Darwyn Sumner (LERC)
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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

Sarah Shaw has just uploaded the file promised.
See http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?pid=2457#p2457

5 Reply by Gordon Barker

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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

Have the species abbreviations for this list been mucked up as well? It looks to me that on entering a code (in the Find Taxon dialogue) where the first 2 letters of the species you are searching for are the same as the first 2 of the genus you get all the members of certain beetle genera in your search results.

e.g. species code [anant] brings up, among many others, Anthonomus bituberculatus, A. britannus, A. brunipennis etc, as the species abbreviation seems to be derived from the repetition in brackets of the Genus (subgenus?)

The species you are looking for should still be in the search results, so correct data entry shouldnt be a problem, just take longer searching through the superfluous results.

Howerver, entering the 3 examples amove as abbreviations (anbit, anbri, anbru) does not find these species in the BEETLES checklist, although all 3 are found in the Recorder 3.3 list so this may only be a problem if there are examples in the Beetles list that arent in the R3 list.

This also appears to affect the ACULEATES list.

(have not installed the December dictionary update yet, so apologies if this has already been noted/fixed)

Gordon

Gordon Barker
Biological Survey Data Manager
National Trust

6 Reply by Matt Smith

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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

Would it not be simpler just to re-do the Coleoptera checklist just to get back to binomial names.  I don't know what the reason is for inseting sub-generic names into the checklist, it is not something that would be needed or wanted my the majority of beetle recorders as far as I can see.

7 Reply by CharlesHussey

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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

I am sorry to hear that the presence of subgenera is causing difficulties. Our aim with the Species Dictionary is to acquire and pass on the best current nomenclature as supplied by experts for the group. It happens that the beetle checklist (and aculeates) now include subgenera.

One way to alleviate matters is for us to make sure that the Dictionary includes records for genus + species, as well as genus + subgenus + species. Ultimately it is down to the Recorder Team what degree of processing they apply to the data that we pass on to them as they prepare them for incorporation into Recorder. Sarah and I are in frequent contact, so we can look at what is possible.

Charles Hussey
Species Dictionary Manager

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!) smile

8 Reply by Matt Smith

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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

CharlesHussey wrote:

I am sorry to hear that the presence of subgenera is causing difficulties. Our aim with the Species Dictionary is to acquire and pass on the best current nomenclature as supplied by experts for the group. It happens that the beetle checklist (and aculeates) now include subgenera.

While I appreciate that we would all like to be working with checklists that represent the "best current nomenclature", I think it is important to look at exactly how the various checklists are being used, and how Recorder is used. 

Recorder is a package whos primary function is recording biological records, the checklists are there to facilitate this.  It is not there to provide a taxonomic overview of each particualar group included on a checklist. 

On a day to day working level I do not come across sub-generic levels of classification when providing site species lists to people.  From a practical point of view I want to be able to input my data, most of which goes in via the five digit search code (eg "Bopas"), from what I can see the addition of the sub-generic levels are causing this facility to retreive the "wrong" things from the taxon dictionary, thus complicating data entry as well as reporting. 

On a working level I would very much like to see sub-generic names removed from the preferred checklists so that Recorder can get on with recording things easily.  If sub-generic names are needed, either keep these in a separate checklist that can be used if required or make use of the NHM Species dictionary site, which is designed to handle this type of data search.

Matt

9 Reply by CharlesHussey

  • CharlesHussey
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Re: Cross-match for Coleopterists

Matt Smith wrote: "Recorder is a package whos primary function is recording biological records, the checklists are there to facilitate this.  It is not there to provide a taxonomic overview of each particualar group included on a checklist. "

Quite so. It is perhaps worth pointing out that one issue confronting the Species Dictnary Team is that Recorder is not our sole customer and that we need to maintain a system that supports needs beyond those of the recording community.  So we need to provide versions of names with and without subgenera.

With regards to the generation of 5-letter codes. We are using an algorithm supplied by Staurt Ball. I shall see if I can tweek this to correctly form the code from first two letters of genus and 3 letters of species, ignoring the subgenus.

Best wishes,

Charles

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!) smile