Wednesday 14 May 2014

Re-targetting

At the start of the year I hoped to record 500 species during 2014, which I am still set to do. For purposes of sanity (and possibly also domestic harmony)  I already ruled out certain groups as "not of interest". Everything's of interest of course, but with such a spread of potential it's wiser to focus on certain groups and disregard others, at least in the short term. There are some groups I will no longer try to work with this year - molluscs, spiders, bugs, for instance. Unless they shout at me to be added, which some may.

So I have raised some targets and lowered others so as to narrow the focus. Even cutting some targets radically (Vascular plants from 200 to 150) still gives me a lot of room to maneouvre. It will be interesting to see how this is modified when I revisit it in a few months time - the end of summer probably. I have ruled out lichens for 2014 altogether, knowing I will almost certainly come back to them late in the year when other things are running down.

With bryophytes already well represented the other groups I will focus on specifically are Vascular Plants, Birds, Hoverflies, Lepidoptera, Fungi. I expect still to accumulate bits and bobs of invert life nevertheless (Odonata, Orthoptera), but I don't have the time to accommodate learning about beetles and spiders for the moment.

Targets now look like this (with number divisions from iRecord):

Taxon Group Recs Taxa Target % targ
amphibian 2 2 3 67
bird 79 71 95 75
centipede 1 1 1 100
conifer 1 1 1 100
crustacean 2 2 2 100
fern 1 1 3 33
flowering plant 92 77 150 51
fungus 27 24 50 48
horsetail 2 2 2 100
insect - Coleoptera 3 3 5 60
i - butterfly 9 6 15 40
i - Dermaptera 1 1 1 100
i - Hymenoptera 6 4 10 40
i - Moth 5 4 70 6
i - Hemiptera 2 2 2 100
i - Orthoptera 0 0 1 0
i - Odonata 0 0 4 0
i - Diptera 18 11 20 55
lichen 3 3 3 100
liverwort 19 13 15 87
millipede 2 2 3 67
mollusc 3 3 3 100
moss 98 67 70 96
spider (Araneae) 4 3 5 60
terr. mammal 3 1 5 20

383 304 539

In practice, this means that I am looking for the following:

Bird 20
Vascular plant 70
Fungus 25
Lepidoptera 75
Bryophyte 5
Diptera 10
Invert other 10

215

No comments:

Post a Comment