News from the recording schemes
2019 is International Year of the Fly, with lots of events and activities planned. To find out more, go to the new Dipterists Forum website, which has been developed and hosted by BRC in partnership with Dipterists Forum. There is plenty of #YearoftheFly activity from the Diptera recording schemes as well.
Calliphoridae and Rhiniidae Recording Scheme
Can you help trap some carrion flies? The recording scheme is running a new project using traps made from plastic water bottles, and baited with a small amount of liver. Blowflies and other carrion-feeding flies are attracted into the trap, and specimens are collected, frozen and posted back to the scheme. This project will add to our knowledge of these flies and the important ecological services they provide, with the results being analaysed as part of a PhD thesis. For full details and how to take part see the recording scheme web page.
Also, this recording scheme now has a slightly longer title! The migratory fly Stomorhina lunata was previously included in family Calliphoridae, but has been moved to family Rhiniidae, hence the new scheme name.
Soldierflies and Allies Recording Scheme: #BeeFlyWatch2019
See the separate Bee-fly Watch newsletter article.
Other scheme news:
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland
Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland has worked with BRC to add extra plant recording features to the iRecord website and app. The new website form was mentioned in a previous newsletter article, and for further information on both the website and the app see this article from BSBI News 140.
Freshwater recorders' meeting
Last October BRC and Buglife jointly hosted a meeting focusing on freshwater recording, with representation from many of the freshwater national schemes. This link provides a summary of the day and downloads of the presentations.
Aquatic Coleoptera Recording Scheme
Work on the third and final part of the water beetle atlas series is under way, with Garth Foster and colleagues collating the records for the remaining beetle families. The two previous atlases are available via the Field Studies Council, covering five familes of the Hydradephaga and five families of the Hydrophiloidea. To submit records see the details on the recording scheme web page.
UK Ladybird Survey
The recording scheme has moved its website to become part of the UK Beetle Recording website that BRC maintains on behalf of the Coleoptera recording schemes, and can now be found at www.coleoptera.org.uk/coccinellidae/home
A new field guide to UK ladybirds by Helen Roy, Peter Brown and Richard Lewington is now available from Bloomsbury Wildlife and other booksellers. It includes distribution maps and species trends based on the recording scheme data.
Sawfly Recording Scheme
Last autumn BRC organised a meeting for sawfly county recorders, which was held at the Natural History Museum. A short report and some resources to download are available here. Since that meeting BRC has helped to mobilise over 4,000 newly verified sawfly records onto the NBN Atlas.
British Bryological Society/Cambridgeshire Bryophyte Group
The Cambridgeshire Bryophyte Group have published a local Flora. See this article for more information.
This article was published in the BRC Newsletter February 2019
