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Topic: Designations updated?

Hello,
I understand that the designations in Recorder reflect the designations in the most recent JNCC list. Unfortunately I can't find designations for some species in Recorder, which I can find in the JNCC list. That seems to affect mostly beetles (Agelastica alni, Crudosilis ruficollis, Drilus flavescens, Platycis minutus, Sitaris muralis, Diaperis bolete). I have the dictionaries installed until 0000003E only and have asked our IT, to install the most recent dictionaries (until 0000003N). Does anybody know, if these dictionaries would update all designations to the level of the most recent JNCC list?
I couldn't find a documentation about that and I fear it might not be the case, because the above mentioned beetles don't even have the designations from the JNCC list from 2014. That could mean, that one of the last updates removed some of the designations?
I've rebuilt the indexes and I run the following SQL to check the designations: SELECT DISTINCT INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME, Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_List_Item_Key FROM INDEX_TAXON_NAME LEFT JOIN Index_Taxon_Designation ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_List_Item_Key WHERE (((INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME)="Agelastica alni"));
Is there somebody, who can help please?

Thanks,
Wolfgang

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Re: Designations updated?

Hi Wolfgang

In my master copy I seem to have designations on Agelastica alni, at least (haven't time tonight to check the others). But see here ad let me know if it looks correct and if it differs from your system:

http://nbn-sd-dev.nhm.ac.uk/taxon.php?l … 0000011206

Just scroll down to the JNCC SOCC designations and the other designations below it. :)

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: Designations updated?

Recorder gives me just RedList_GB_post2001-DD for Agelastica alni (we're on the latest dictionary) and nothing for Platycis or Diaperis.

These are all species covered by the recent reviews - this may be for Mike to check if Chris has them all up to date?

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Designations updated?

Hi Charlie

The recent ones don't seem to have been updated but check the links here and let me know. We had been expecting a JNCC update but it wasn't issued before Dario left for his PhD. I think this was possibly because the chap who had been helping him with all the invert designatory changes had recently retired!

http://nbn-sd-dev.nhm.ac.uk/taxon.php?l … 0001719616
http://nbn-sd-dev.nhm.ac.uk/taxon.php?l … 0000024831

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: Designations updated?

Looks like they haven't made it into Recorder yet? I forget the process?

Charlie Barnes
Information Officer
Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership

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Re: Designations updated?

Graham French recently told me that he has taken on the job of updating the designations so I hope he will be able to send through an update some time soon :)

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: Designations updated?

Hello,
I’ve got problems to understand, where species designations are kept in Recorder.
I’m running Recorder6.26.2.286, dictionary 0000003X. I have rebuilt the indexes in the given order (that means in particular I rebuilt the ‘Taxon_Designation_Index’ after all the other ones).
My understanding was that the index tables are a shortcut to aggregate several tables into one without losing information.  So I thought I can get all designations for all species from the table ‘Index_Taxon_designations’. Therefor I extracted designations for species from Recorder with the following query:
SELECT DISTINCT INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME, Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_List_Item_Key, Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_Designation_Type_Key, TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.SHORT_NAME FROM (Index_Taxon_Designation LEFT JOIN TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE ON Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_Designation_Type_Key = TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE_KEY) LEFT JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME ON Index_Taxon_Designation.Taxon_List_Item_Key = INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY ORDER BY INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME;
I also used the Recorder report ‘SxBRCDesignationsForTaxon’ and that showed some designations, which I couldn’t see with the query. Therefor I created a query based on the SxBRC report:
SELECT INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY, INDEX_TAXON_NAME.PREFERRED_NAME, INDEX_TAXON_NAME1.COMMON_NAME, TAXON_GROUP.TAXON_GROUP_NAME, TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.KIND, TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.SHORT_NAME, TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.LONG_NAME, TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.DESCRIPTION, TAXON_DESIGNATION.STATUS_GEOGRAPHIC_AREA, TAXON_DESIGNATION.DATE_FROM, TAXON_DESIGNATION.DATE_TO FROM (((((((INDEX_TAXON_NAME INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_GROUP ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = INDEX_TAXON_GROUP.CONTAINED_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME AS INDEX_TAXON_NAME1 ON INDEX_TAXON_GROUP.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = INDEX_TAXON_NAME1.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN INDEX_TAXON_NAME AS INDEX_TAXON_NAME2 ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME1.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = INDEX_TAXON_NAME2.RECOMMENDED_TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_DESIGNATION ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME2.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = TAXON_DESIGNATION.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE ON TAXON_DESIGNATION.TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE_KEY = TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE.TAXON_DESIGNATION_TYPE_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_LIST_ITEM ON INDEX_TAXON_NAME.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY = TAXON_LIST_ITEM.TAXON_LIST_ITEM_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_VERSION ON TAXON_LIST_ITEM.TAXON_VERSION_KEY = TAXON_VERSION.TAXON_VERSION_KEY) INNER JOIN TAXON_GROUP ON TAXON_VERSION.OUTPUT_GROUP_KEY = TAXON_GROUP.TAXON_GROUP_KEY;

This showed more species with designations which I didn’t get from my first query (one example: Tortula atrovirens; TLIK: NHMSYS0000309047). Now I wonder why that is the case. The principal difference between these two queries is that my query uses the table ‘Index_Taxon_Designation’ while the Sussex query uses the tables ‘Taxon_Designation’ and ‘Taxon_Designation_Type’.
I now have the following questions:
1)    Do others have the same differences, when they use these different approaches to extract designations?
2)    Is my understanding of the ‘Index_Taxon_Designation’ table as a summary table for all designations of all species wrong?
3)    If others see the same differences and my understanding of the index table is correct, has then the process which updates the ‘Index_Taxon_Designation’ table not working properly?
These issues made me have a look into the table ‘Taxon_Designation_Type’. There are some things, which I don’t understand. The table has some designations twice or more, but with slightly different names (‘Badgers-1992’ and ‘Protection_of_Badgers_Act_1992’ (I’ve just seen, that has already been mentioned on the forum, but not solved?), ‘NR’ and ‘NR- Nationally Rare’ and ‘NR-excludes’ and ‘NR-includes’). The ‘Index_Taxon_Designation’ table doesn’t use quite a lot of the designations in the table ‘Taxon_Designation_Type’ especially not the ones which seem to be twice or more in the table.
That might mean I should use the index table and ignore the non-index table if I want to extract designations for species. But then I seem to lose some designations. E.g.: Tortula atrovirens; TLIK: NHMSYS000030904 has the designation ‘NS-excludes’ if I don’t use the index tables and no designation if I use the index tables. If I then compare it to the most recent JNCC list (‘Taxon_designations_20161124.zip’ on http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-3408), I don’t find any designation for this species and when I then check the most recent (?) publication about the status of bryophytes in Britain (http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Activit … reList.pdf), I find again the designation ‘National Scarce’.
That leads to the second part of my question: How up to date are the designations in Recorder?  I know, that there is probably not enough funding to keep the designations in Recorder updated immediately after a change is published by JNCC or somewhere else, but I wouldn’t mind to know at least, how up to date the designations are. I couldn’t find anything about that in Recorder or on the forum.
At the end of the day I want to extract species records from Recorder with the most recent or at least well documented designations. How do other people do that? Do you use the designations in Recorder and if yes, how do you do that? Or do you keep your own designation tables?

Thanks,
Wolfgang

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Re: Designations updated?

Hello,
having looked closer into the problem, I came to the following conclusion:
A query which extracts the species designations based on the non-index tables extracts all designations, if there are designations of the same type and for the same area, but from different times available. That is especially the case for "nationally scarce, rare...", where the designation has changed over time.
A query which extracts the species designations based on the index tables extracts only the most recent designation, even if there are designations of the same type for the same area, but from different times available.

Wolfgang