Updated software

Behind the scenes the iRecord development team have continued to maintain the online systems needed for such a large and complex recording platform. A major update to the Drupal software that iRecord uses was implemented in late 2021, to ensure that the site remains secure and up to date. As usual there have been a few teething problems following the change, but the transition was carried out smoothly and we continue to monitor and improve the performance of the systems wherever we can.

Rove Beetles (Staphylinidae)

There are new scheme organisers in place for the Rove Beetle (Staphylinidae) Recording Scheme: Don Stenhouse and Alison Thornhill have taken this on, building on the work of the late Peter Hammond. Initially they are focusing on processing the backlog of around 15,000 records on iRecord.

Article

Information on temporal trends in species’ distributions and abundances is needed to monitor progress towards international biodiversity targets and the effectiveness of conservation actions. Ultimately, this information comes from data documenting the sighting of one or more individuals of some taxon at a given place and time. Depending on where, when and how these data were collected—e.g. by professional biologists according to a defined sampling protocol, or opportunistically by volunteer naturalists—they may or may not be suitable for trend estimation.