Steve,

As before, This species in in, but without an authority. (Generally we have agood list of gall-forming insects, supplied by the British Plant Gall Society).

Acalitus plicans (Nalepa, 1917) has been added, with a Taxon Version Key of NHMSYS0020561508

Charles Hussey

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!)

Steve
There is a problem with the Gateway as it stands in that it only returns information for species that it actually has data for. So the fact that tese species are not showing up indicates that there are no actual records of the species on the Gateway.
This problem is already looged and will be tackled (probably in the Spetember release of the Gateway). This will also include information the designations associated with the species listed.
Best wishes
Steve

Steve,

The functionality is in place currently and went live with version 3.4 of the NBN Gateway at the end of March. It is available in version 3.4 of the webservices, so if you are using a webservice client please can you upgrade (or request that it is upgraded) to the latest webservice version.

On the website itself, the front page search box still only searches taxon for which the Gateway has records. However, there is another search box that utilises the webservices located at: http://data.nbn.org.uk/nbnexamples/ws-taxonomySearch.jsp  This does exactly as you require, searches the entire dictionary not just those we have records for. It's functionality, however, is rather basic as it is intended as a webservice client example not as a website feature.

We are looking at improving the Gateway website itself to include taxonomic information for species we have no records for, and that is currently scheduled for version 3.5 in September of this year.

Sorry for the confusion.

Steve,

Further to all of the above, when you (or others) post a request for a species to be added to the Dictionary, this can usually be accomplished fairly quickly. However, you need to be aware that updates of the Species Dictionary are usually only sent to JNCC only when they request an update, or when a new checklist has been added. When JNCC receive a new version of the Dictionary, the taxonomy for the NBN Gateway is usually updated fairly quickly, but there may be a time lag before updates are issued to Recorder users. I think that we would all like the service to be more responsive but it is not efficient to roll out updates of only a few records.

At least, by popping small requests into the 'List of Additional Names', they can be easily accommodated - originally we would have asked a requester to contact the Data Provider for the relevant group and it would be up to them whether to accept the new record and it wouldn't reach us until they issued there next update.

Finally, I should offer an apology for the current Species Dictionary website hosted by the NHM www.nhm.ac.uk/nbn/, which hasn't been updated for a long time. We are currently rebuilding the website and, when this is finished, it will be a lot easier to keep up to date (When the server lived underneath my desk, updating was a doddle. Nowadays it is quite a palaver).

Regards,

Charles Hussey

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!)