Hi Chris,

I am sure this has been brought up before but I doubt I am up to date with UKSI standards in this area.  Many species, particularly invertebrates, have names on the UKSI, and hence in the Recorder/Webservices species dictionaries, with Subgeneric names included.  I have in the past found that these make it difficult when searching for particular species as the search algorithm does not take account of the fact that most naturalists merely use the binomial names (without the added Subgenera) and expect the input name to be searched for to exactly match the name on the dictionary (i.e. WITH the Subgeneric name).

This issue has recently been mentioned on the "beetles-britishisles" Yahoo group and Malcolm Storey has posted the following which I totally agree with:

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        'Malcolm Storey' malcolm.storey@dsl.pipex.com [beetles-britishisles] <beetles-britishisles@yahoogroups.com>
        Today at 14:02

To:   beetles-britishisles@yahoogroups.com

Hi Andrew,

                Subgenera can be irritating, but of course their use is (or rather should be) entirely optional.

To make them optional, the picking lists in recording packages need to have the straight binominal included as a synonym. Most packages and databases nowadays use the UKSI taxon dictionary managed by Chris Raper at the Natural History Museum (I think MapMate and Living Record are the exceptions and MapMate at least is moving in the right direction). So make sure these synonyms are always included when you submit the spreadsheet version of your checklist to Chris.

Malcolm
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Can you possibly let me/us know if this is actually currently done within the UKSI and if not then possibly why not ??

Many thanks.
Steve