The perils of licensing invertebrate collecting

A contributor to the BWARS Facebook group recently expressed surprise that there was limited control over who collects insects or other invertebrate specimens. The comment drew attention to an important issue that I think is poorly understood.

In the UK, we don't have a single law banning insect collection except by a few privileged individuals who can fight their way through masses of officialdom (i.e. a few academics). Yes, we do have a system whereby there is a need for a permit to collect from certain land designations. There is also provision to protect certain species that are vulnerable to the effects of collecting. Fortunately, the latter is fairly light touch but there are restrictions that could cause problems where species are very similar. In addition, some landowners, such as the National Trust and Forestry Commission, do have general permitting systems.

There is also a growing question of whether collected specimens are accompanied by permits in order that they be accepted by museums? So, in fact we have quite a range of officialdom ourselves - it just that it is not unified and there are grey areas.

The drawbacks of permitting

For the serious entomologist permits can be a problem.

Until recently, I ran Dipterists Forum's summer field meeting. It is a Mammoth undertaking. At one time, these meetings tried to visit as many SSSI in the area visited. They relied on the then organiser (who was a Grade 7 in the Nature Conservancy Council) to organise all the access permissions. When the NCC was disbanded there was nobody to do this and it became increasingly difficult to run such meetings. There is a good two months’ work involved in securing access to sufficient sites to keep a team of 20+ Dipterists occupied for a week. It is not really a job that can be undertaken by a volunteer and' in my experience, it became very difficult to get help from Statutory Agency staff. I well remember spending several trips simply visiting the local offices each day to sort out permissions - so if you are paying £300 to £400 for a week away, you don't really want to spend your time cooped up in an office, ringing landowners!

The solution was to stop attempting to visit SSSI and to concentrate on land where one could secure blanket access permission: The Wildlife Trusts, Forestry Commission, National Trust and local National Nature Reserves. Hopefully that job can be done in a day - but it is still a demanding job for a volunteer. Needless to say, I lost enthusiasm for the job of running field meetings and eventually bowed out of running such big events. Finding a replacement for such an onerous job is not easy and I doubt that such meetings will carry on for that much longer.

This situation highlights a critical issue: most of the UK's biodiversity data comes from volunteers and the highest quality data come from those few specialists who do collect specimens. If we don't have a practical way of managing permits then we will probably lose access to a lot of new data and will see a decline in the numbers of specialists who are prepared to provide information to UK data users. If one looks for an analogous situation, it is worth thinking about the difficulty of obtaining collecting permits for some European countries. Do they have a wealth of data on difficult taxa? Simple answer: No! Conversely, the UK is one of the richest countries for biodiversity data, including for many difficult groups.

It seems to me that the comparison tells an important story. If you impose a strict permitting system you will lose access to data. So, the moral of the story seems to me to be that if you want information it is essential to make the system simple as possible.

Flies in bat roosts

I wonder if there is scope for Dipterists and bat groups to link up in order to get a better picture of the flies that occur within such places?

We know really very little about the distribution of bat flies Nycteribiidae and Dipterists very rarely see them. There are other flies, however, that seem to be closely associated with bat guano, especially Heliomyzidae. Again, Dipterists don't see them, especially as access to bat roosts is restricted.

Maybe there is somebody in the 'batting' community who would be interested in taking on a project to look at what can be bred out of bat guano? Alternatively, perhaps we could find a Dipterist who would be prepared to accept samples of bat guano and try to breed flies from it? I'm not specifically volunteering, but would be interested in trying a limited number of samples to see how practical such a project might be.

Any takers amongst the bat groups to help supply guano, and a Dipterist or two to try breeding from it?

HRS training courses

Although I have written on the subject of training on several occasions, I don't think I have set out, in detail, what we offer and how we deliver our courses. There is an article in Antenna, but I guess that very few people will have read that or even noticed it! So, perhaps I need to set out the basics:

Thanks to grants from the OPAL fund, Natural England and Dipterists Forum, the HRS (& Dipterists Forum) has the capacity to travel the length and breadth of the country delivering training courses to local groups. Quite simply, we fill the car with 12 microscopes plus camera microscope plus 5 store boxes of specimens and whatever other equipment that we need for the trip (Computer, books, handouts etc). Normally we have to travel the day preceding the course so we are usually faced with two nights in a B&B (it can be more when we go to far-flung corners such as Orkney and Shetland).

We offer three main courses:

• Introduction to Hoverflies: an entry-level course designed to take the absolute novice through the basics of comparative anatomy and interpreting keys using Stubbs & Falk. This is a two-day course that is trimmed down from the three-day course that we run each year for the FSC and Manchester Metropolitan University.
• Intermediate Hoverflies: a two-day course that concentrates on difficult genera, especially Cheilosia and Platycheirus. It is aimed at people with a reasonable level of experience who have previously done our introductory course.
• Introduction to Diptera. We have run various permustations, including a straight four-day course for the FSC, two consecutive weekends for the Beds, Cambs and Northants Wildlife Trust, and a two-day version such as we ran for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. This course is the most problematic because we don't think two days are enough, but it is difficult to deliver over a longer time-frame without reducing the numbers who might want to attend. 

How the courses work?

Our courses have evolved over the past 25 years and are now wholly based on a set of specimens that allow us to give each student the same specimen. It means that I maintain a huge volume of specimens in a total of ten store boxes (a lot of shelf space in my house!). This allows us to run courses in the winter, which is our preferred approach because it reduces the impact on our summer field itinerary. Our courses are limited to a maximum of 12 participants and we won't travel long distances for any fewer than 8 participants.

We provide a series of powerpoint presentations that include discussion of issues such as maintaining and managing a collection, field craft and a plethora of anatomical features. In essence what you get is a solid module in comparative anatomy. However, it is neither stuffy, nor dull. If you are interested in Diptera there will be something there for you and you will get the best opportunity possible to develop skills.

Day one starts with an introductory talk followed by a series of sessions in which we guide you through the keys, including group sessions before letting people loose to work at their own pace. We think this is essential because it makes sure that everybody gets attention and the critical issues are fully covered as a group.

As the weekend progresses, we punctuate the sessions with presentations to explain anatomical issues and of course to cover requisite skills in curation, recording and field craft.

How much does it cost?

We charge at cost for fuel, accommodation and road/bridge tolls/ferries. We set a basic £15 per each (i.e. £30) per full day subsistence allowance (will adjust for part-days) and also make a charge (£6 per student) for some course handouts (introduction to Hoverflies). The charge is made as an invoice from Dipterists Forum and we in turn invoice Dipterists Forum for our costs. Basic costs where a 2 night stay is required and a drive of up to 600 miles will cost in the region of £300-£350 at current rates but will be higher for longer distances or if ferry crossings are required.

Logistics

We provide:

• Full set of specimens for the course
• Camera microscope, computer and presentations
• Set of 12 microscopes for students
• Course literature for students to retain
• Relevant text books (i.e. Stubbs & Falk) for loan during the course

Our requirements:

• Room capable of accommodating us plus 12 students, each with desk space of appx. 4' x 2' - we also need sufficient space to set out collections etc so usually between 16 and 20 standard stackable tables
• Powerpoint projector (and suitable surface to project onto - we can provide a screen but prefer to work with local facilities where possible - reduces the risk of loss of valuable items whilst travelling)
• Facilities for making refreshments
• 12 students - organised by you

Following a trip to Orkney where we found that 3 out of 8 of our expected group failed to attend, we won't run courses where the students don't pay anything towards the costs. We took this decision because we think that where courses are free it is more likely that you will get casual interest participants who won't use the course and may well not attend because they have no personal investment in it.

Booking

We usually organise our itinerary a year in advance, so we are looking to make bookings for winter 2018-19. We will probably restrict ourselves to a maximum of four courses next winter, somewhat dependent upon my health, so bookings may have to be provisional.

Changing recording demographics

When we took on the Hoverfly Recording Scheme (HRS) in 1991 the ways in which data were submitted and absorbed were utterly different from today. Likewise, the contact we had with recorders was also very different. Most people submitted records on cards or via a bespoke database such as RECORDER or MAPMATE. We did a great deal of the data entry and mainly communicated by letter or through the HRS Newsletter. Feedback was inevitably intermittent and we could control the pace at which we worked. Data entry was confined to the winter months, whilst we had the summer to do our own field work.

Scrolling forward 25 years, we have seen a paradigm shift in which databases have substantially disappeared from the scene, spreadsheets are the main way in which data arrive, and we now extract some data direct from posts on Facebook, Flickr, iSpot etc. We mainly communicate via the UK Hoverflies Facebook page and provide more permanent feedback on this blog. The HRS Newsletter continues and does reach some of our traditional recorders who don't 'do' social media. This shift is clearly illustrated in Figure 1, which was prepared by Stuart for his talk to the Huntingdon Flora and Fauna Society last night.

Figure 1. Sources of data arriving at the HRS, 1991 to 2018.

There has also been a remarkable change in recruitment of new recorders. There are several ways in which one can define a new recorder: the critical issue is probably to define those who genuinely make a regular or substantial contribution to the dataset rather than those one-off casual records that add lots of names but very few records. Thus, we can see from Figure 2 that until around 2006, the numbers of new recruits were relatively small; often below 30 per year. There are two reasons that explain the rise from 2006 onwards.

Firstly, we became a lot more active running training courses from around 2005 onwards. Initially we were constrained by the need to use venues where people brought their own microscopes or used those 'scopes provided at the venue. This constraint was removed in 2009 when a grant from the OPAL fund allowed us to buy 13 microscopes which we now transport to far-flung venues. So, we would like to think that our efforts to train and enthuse have had some impact.

Around the same time, iSpot and 'Wild About Britain' became available as a way for people to get help with identification of their finds. It encouraged a new photographic recording community and set the scene for much greater inter-active recording. In reality, interactive media have probably played a far bigger role in growing the recorder community, which is most obvious from Figure 2. This graph uses two different metrics to define a new recorder: one based on regular submission of 5 or more records yearly, and the other based on the total number of records submitted, with 250 as the threshold for a 'new' recorder. Both systems tell a similar story, with a clear jump in activity from around 2011 and a further jump around 2014 when the UK Hoverflies Facebook page really became established.

Figure 2. Metrics for defining 'new recorders'. The upper graph comprises the numbers of recorders in a given year, whilst the lower one illustrates recruitment of major contributors.

This year, we are pretty well up to date with importing data into the HRS database, so the figures for numbers of records yearly are almost 'real-time'. They tell a similar story to the numbers of recorders, but really highlight the impact of the Facebook group, which I think we can say with confidence has almost doubled the numbers of records entering the system (Figure 3). The total for 2017 is likely to climb a little more because we always see a slow trickle of records over the year after a big influx in January. Whether 2017 will ultimately overtake 2016 remains to be seen, but it is highly likely. I suspect we have a little way further to go before a new asymptote is reached, but my guess is that the new level of recording will probably lie somewhere between 60 and 70,000 records annually.

Figure 3. Numbers of records on the HRS database

Diptera training courses

Stuart recently put together the map figured here to show where we had given training courses over the past 25 years. The vast majority were in the past ten years but we did start running courses way back when we ran one at the now defunct Rogate Field Station for the Ecological Studies Society linked to Birkbeck College.

Our ability to provide courses was greatly improved by grants from the OPAL fund that facilitated the purchase of a camera-microscope and a set of microscopes for running courses away from traditional field centres. The map tells the story and shows how effective the OPAL money has been in facilitating training. Some additional funding has been provided by Natural England and by Dipterists Forum which, together, have made it even more practical to fill the car with equipment and travel to a far-off location. The longest journey so far was Shetland. We have also had inquires from Ireland and from France but as yet have not managed to take them further .... maybe one day!

What the map does not show is the numbers of times we have run courses at particular locations. For example, we have run courses at Preston Montford on perhaps 15-20 occasions. Likewise we have run numerous courses at Ring Haw Field Station for the local Wildlife Trust and have travelled to Glasgow on at least half a dozen occasions. Most others are single or a couple of visits. Where possible we try to do a couple of basic courses and then do an intermediate follow-up course to help with difficult genera.

In the last two years we have scaled back our efforts. This year we only have a couple of courses scheduled. If my health permits, then hopefully we will do a few more next winter - I have had several inquiries and we are keen to get back on the road. So, hopefully there will be a few more dots on maps by April 2019!

Locations where training courses in Diptera and Hoverfly identification have been provided  by Stuart Ball & Roger Morris since 1993