iSpot links valid IDs to two record systems - GBIF and NBN. dejayM linked a recent post to a specific GBF record:
Furthermore, we are frequently encouraged to record observations on iRecord. And all the various specialist sites and Fastbuck groups also accept records.
From comments made here in the forum, iNaturalist seems to contribute records to one or t’other system, but it was commented that iSpot does not.
So: what is the hierarchy here? Are they all contributing to a central database, or maintained separately? In my naivety, I had assumed some overarching authority,
Briefly
Our personal records SHOULD be submitted to Local Regional Biology Records Centres. It is there that collators and Managers ratify for themselves whether the record is viable. And THEY regularly submit to the NBN Portal, after which they reach the GBIF one.
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I do NOT think that harvesting records from any online Citizen Science site like iNat or iSpot should get to the NBN portal without acceptance from an approved person.
I am proud of my contributions to GBIF but less of them are also in NBN, for the reason given above, (I find NBN difficult to manipulate anyway) It was MY persistence and Chris_Valentine’s Coding that gives you the GBIF Link
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But iNat IS different, in that ANY agreement makes a record acceptable for the GBIF Portal (Research Grade is the equivalent of the Likely ID Banner) .
When researching I OFTEN disconnect the iNat records because they are unreliable, I’d be tempted to to do the same with iRecord and iSpot IF they were separate datasets in GBIF. As we know it is often difficult to get acceptance in iRecord.
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Reginal Records Centres
•https://www.alerc.org.uk/
•https://www.brc.ac.uk/
•Recording and monitoring schemes | Biological Records Centre
•iRecord and iNaturalistUK | iRecord
I am one of the few iSpot users who displays a ‘Badge’ (paid up member) in support of my own two ‘local’ Biological Records Centres
I record most of my records on irecord. Several national scheme recorders including Steve Gregory verify them on the site. My local moth verifier prefers records are posted on irecord and he is quick to verify them. My understanding is that irecord records eventually transfer over to local record centres.
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My only exceptions are, I pass fungal records to the local fungal group leader. And, any records I make in Highland area are passed to the excellent local records centre - Highland Biological Recording Group.
It does seem to be a bit anarchic.
In VC17 (my home vice-county) some of the county recorders will not look at records on iRecord.What I do - which may not be appropriate in other areas - is to send all insect records to my moth county recorder. He seems to process them (though I don’t know whether he does this through other recorders or what). But I also put all insect records apart from moths on iRecord. When I send my spreadsheet to my moth CR at the end of the year, I put the names of the iRecord verifyers next to the records, where relevant. With non-insect records - apart from birds - I just put them on iRecord. I only use iNat as a last resort when I haven’t a clue what the ID is and where iSpot hasn’t helped. But so far I don’t think I’ve ever had a plausible ID on iNat for something posted there which I didn’t already know what it was.
The only other innovation is that, thanks to Zo, I’ve now established contact with the county spider recorder and will send him some records. (But they wouldn’t have gone to my moth CR anyway as they aren’t insects!)
Accepted records.
I do not send ALL my records to my Regional Recorder. Recorders will usually say ‘every record is valuable’. But I am not an avid recorder or anything, except where I find rarities or ‘new to my region’ records.
Take Hayhurstia atriplicis - another damned Aphid. I found it for myself, it was a second record for my county - but the first had not been confirmed
So I set to, beginning in iSpot,¹ to see how widespread it was and then sent the result to my HBRG recorder - all those records are seen as a cluster on the UK map Hayhurstia atriplicis (Linnaeus, 1761) zoom in, then run the time-slider to 2015 ² - NO previous Orkney records.
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None of Regional Records are illustrated ³ so I made two in iNat, one of which is here Occurrence Detail 2823398734.
I do not submit records to my County or Regional recorders of anything that is well recorded, unless asked.
You are likely to spoil your relationship with your County Recorder if you send in records that are not fairly easily confirmable by them or are of really common things like Magpie moths (for example). In short, get your confirmation in iRecord, here in iSpot¹ , or, less so, iNat THEN give it to the R.recorder with a photo. You need a good relationship with your County recorder
It may vary from county to county. My CR asked me to send him all insect records. But in practice I only send him the first one of each insect each year. Surrey has produced quite a few county atlases (birds, dragonflies, ladybirds, moths, micromoths, hoverflies etc…) and obviously this requires the amassing of a lot of data. So the CR(s) are not going to spurn any records.
I also assumed that iSpot records were scooped up by iRecord (after noting records on their site which I didn’t post, but also because we are asked not to post records on both sites) and then added to a central database. It’s only recently on this forum that I learned the system had changed. Since when I have added my invertebrate records along the river and the notable ones from the tufa stream to iRecord as well.
Reading deejayM’s and HB1’s comments it appears, unless I have misunderstood, that even then iRecord postings are not necessarily added to a central database. This is a shame because often the NBN Record Cleaner flags up that the record is outside the known area for that species, and one would have hoped once the record is accepted as correct, it would be logged and the Record Cleaner would adjust its records.
Surely that is what happens?! i.e. once a record has been accepted subsequent records from nearby should not be flagged.
But I’ve noticed that there is a time delay. For example, I had a record of a pine ladybird (larva) accepted today and it hadn’t yet featured on the ladybird revisits web map.
We are currently trying to allow ispot records to irecord and NBN and hope to have meetings with both when it can be arranged. There was some delay with NBN to get onto same dictionary but think we can get round that. Currently not clear why irecord are not accepting ispot data (we only want a subset to go there) but hope to clarify at meeting when can be arranged.
Thank you very much, this is very exciting news! I don’t mind at all continuing to add the kick survey sightings (only 2 or 3 times a year) on iRecord to get them on NBN but it really would be great if all our iSpot records could be added.
But how to avoid duplication of records - I’ve got a couple of thousand on iRecord already, many of which I’ve checked on iSpot first. Would it be possible to allow individuals to opt out?
Supposedly NBN at least have methods to avoid duplicates or at least flag them. There is another issue with ispot records on irec, the only lot that were allowed to be sent were done many years ago and some of those may have been updated to correct the name or location. On NBN this should not be an issue when updating ispot data as they should just get a full up to date download which would overwrite any previous version of the data from ispot itself.
