This is for us to share Resources which may be of interest.
There are already some resouces on forum posts, but it could be useful to group them together.
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I will add the French ladybirds multi- access key i recently came across.
As time permits we can add others, and maybe gather links to other form posts with similar resources.
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French Ladybird Key.
Beetles of various sorts, often ladybirds, come inside to hibernate. They wake up when the heating in the building comes on.
I have been giving them sugared water and placing them in a dry place outside – just to give them a chance ; I know it may be futile.
This one looked a bit different – black Elytra with red markings, so I looked online for ‘ladybird key’
This was offered ; it is a multi-access identification key based on colour patterns in ladybirds (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae). It is in English.
It describes the key as suitable for citizen science use where users have a x10 lens; compares it to single-use keys, and analyses its effectivesness (which it says is good). The article has explicit instructions on what is meant by each of the characters used.
The authors work at L’institut de Systématique, Evolution. Biodiversité, (National Natural History Museum) Paris.
In the article there is this link to the key:
http://french-ladybird.identificationkey.fr/mkey.html
It was, as described, easy to use, and it gave an ID of Adalia bipunctata f. quadrimculta which looked reasonable to me.
I may post this as an observation in Global (France), but I am not really expecting agreements – I’ve only got a top image of a 5mm long ladybird.
However I think that anyone interested in these Coleoptera might like try the key for themself. Though it is for French ladybirds, I had a look at Adalia bipunctata on GBIF and it is widespread in Europe (and elsewhere), so the key may be useful in British Isles.
EDIT 10.1.23 thanks to an intervention on the post itself by Chrisbrooks I was able to agree his ID using the key. See comments https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/global/view/observation/856379/ladybird-key
This is what makes ispot so special and brings me back regularly.
EDIT 25.1.23. This is the UK Ladybird Survey. It has ID Guides, ( thanks to Surreybirder).
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I have found a Dutch one for fungi.
It worked well with a good percentage for this observation.
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At the risk of being pedantic (again), I think that Danmarks Svampeatlas might be Danish rather than Dutch? Dutch would probably be Nederlands …
Having said that, it got a so-so photo of crimped gill right in about a second!
This is the forum post for Alan Silversides Livhen Archive.
This is an ID guide for non native marine species.
https://plymsea.ac.uk/id/eprint/9076/1/MBA%20NNS%20Guide%202020%20(29%20MB).pdf
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@miked
As of December 2022, [Species Fungorum] accepts 18 species of Dufourea .
Remember Xanthodactylon?
Dufourea species are grouped in a clade with a sister taxon relationship to genus Xanthoria
Interesting, I wonder why so many in that group are so bright orange especially when in full sun.
Trentepohlia is one of the algal genera that occur as lichen photobionts, so that would be a possible explanation. The colour of Trentepohlia comes from carotenoids.
That is the kind of thing I was getting at except I thought it was the fungus that formed the structure of the lichen with the algae inside so it might be the colour of the fungus that dominates. On the other hand light needs to get to the algae so perhaps that colour does show through.
From https://www.anbg.gov.au/lichen/chemistry-1.html
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Some compounds in the upper cortices of lichen thalli reduce the intensity of the light reaching the photobiont cells. For example, photobionts in the genus Trebouxia (one of the commonest photobiont genera) function best in relatively low light. Lichens with such light filtering compounds can show variations in the concentrations of the compounds, with thalli growing in exposed locations having higher concentrations of filtering compounds than thalli growing in shaded locations. Carotenoids are pigments which vary from yellow to red in colour and which are found in a variety of organisms including a number of lichen genera such as Caloplaca 
and Xanthoria . Carotenoids play a number of roles. They help with photosynthesis (by absorbing light of wavelengths different to those absorbed by chlorophyll and transferring the captured light energy to the photosynthesis process) but also protect photosynthetic (and other) tissues against photo-oxidation by UV light. Carotenoid concentrations vary between species but even for a given species carotenoid production can vary depending on the amount of light where a thallus is growing. For example, a study involving the genus Xanthoria showed carotenoid content of 25 micrograms per gram of dry weight of thallus for Xanthoria fallax growing in a shady site and 71 micrograms for the same species in a sunny site. For Xanthoria parietina the corresponding figures were 48 and 63 micrograms. Experimental studies have shown that synthesis of parietin, a protective pigment in the lichen Xanthoria parietina , depended on UV-B radiation, with UV-A inducing little synthesis and photosynthetically active radiation inducing none
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……………
And if that whets your appetite, there’s more on the website about primary & secondary metabolites and the chemical tests used to detect them ……
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See how orange it is.
From Marlandza,
The BSBI produce Plant Cribs. Here is an example for Typha.
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Here is the full list.
https://bsbi.org/plant-crib
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A Revision of the Southern African Genus Babiana (Iridaceae)
]Series: Strelitzia Volume: 18
By: Peter Goldblatt(Author), John C Manning(Author)
104 pages, 6 plates with colour photos; 15 b/w line drawings, 48 b/w distribution maps
http://opus.sanbi.org/jspui/bitstream/20.500.12143/248/3/Strelitzia_18_2007.pdf
Hope this is the best way to share
Ian Smith has excellent information on ACORN BARACLES here: Introduction to barnacle morphology & identification 7000 | Flickr
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Flickr links don’t link in iSpot posts ( for some reason unknown to me) but might work here in the Forum.
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I can always EDIT this resource post if necessary.
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A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin
by P.M. Eckel, F.L.S.
https://www.mobot.org/mobot/latindict/introduction.shtml
The Dictionary was originally compiled as a personal resource by P.M. Eckel, Missouri Botanical Garden, and is here shared with other taxonomists. The sections of the Dictionary are being added to the online database in reverse alphabetic order (Z to A) for good and sufficient reasons, including ease in cross-referencing.
A suggested citation for this online resource is:
Eckel, P.M. 2011. A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin. Missouri Botanical Garden.
URL: A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin
Users are encouraged to use the % wildcard in searches because Latin is an inflected language, and word endings may be various
This is a LICHEN WEBSITE with English keys.
For those interested in marine matters this video about maerl beds in the Wester Ross Marine Protected area:
You do need vast quantities of optimism not feel rather depressed by the end of it.
Yes rather depressing, reminds me of the films of felling of rainforest and temperate forests that there were in the 1970’s. Bringing the information to the wider public, now starting to look in the oceans and trying to show what is going on there in a less glossy way than BBC.