The Bouchout Declaration for Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management

On the 12^th June 2014 the Bouchout Declaration was launched at Bouchout Castle in the grounds of the Botanical Garden Meise, Belgium. The declaration aims to promote openness of biodiversity data and encourage digital access to those data. The original signatories included more than 50 institutions from all over the world. Many were influential institutions such as Kew Gardens in the UK; Berlin Botanic Garden in Germany; Naturalis in the Netherlands and the Natural History Museum, Paris.

I encourage you to sign up to the declaration and support its values, either as an institution or an individual.

Below I've given five reasons why you should sign the declaration and five Dos and Don’ts of data openness… 

Five reasons to sign the The Bouchout Declaration

1. Good scientists show the evidence for their assertions
2. Modelling and protecting the biosphere is impossible without large amounts of high quality data
3. We need evidence-based, not opinion-based, policies
4. Small amounts of data have little value, but large amounts of pooled data are priceless
5. These data should not be lost, they will have just as much value in the future

Five DOs of digital openness

1. Publish your data, so that people can cite you
2. Ensure your data is available in an agreed standard
3. Make sure your data is well described so that it can be discovered and is useable
4. Deposit your data in a long-term repository
5. Promote the use of your data to others, who might not know how useful it is

Five DON'Ts of digital openness

1. Don’t sit on your data for years because you think you might make use of it one day
2. Don’t display your data, but make it difficult for people to download
3. Don’t hold on to it because you think it has commercial value, unless you actually have a business plan for its exploitation
4. Don’t restrict access of your data to the IT literate
5. Don’t think your data is insignificant

Delegates of the pro-iBiosphere Final Event at Bouchout Castle

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

A report of a trip I took to Corsica in 2004

A Continent-like Geography

Corsica has a lot packed into a small area. It is 180 km long and 83 km wide. It covers an area only slightly larger than North Yorkshire, but with less than half its population. Its physical geography reads more like a continent than a small island. It has about 1000 miles of coastline and more than 100 peaks over 2000m. Unlike many islands in the Mediterranean, Corsica has rivers that flow all year round, fed by snow from the highest peaks. This makes Corsica the sparsest populated and the most mountainous island in the western Mediterranean. Habitats of interest to botanists abound. Around the coast are marshes, lagoons, cliffs, dunes, and beaches of sand and shingle. Cultivated land is typically Mediterranean, with meadows, olive groves, chestnut plantations and vineyards. While an impenetrable maquis covers uncultivated land at low elevations; at higher altitude are large forests of Oak and Pine and ascending further still, you can find a true alpine flora.

The mountains of Corsica are built predominantly of granite and rhyolite and though the island is geographically close to Italy, the mountains originate from a thirty million year old chain of mountains that stretched across northern Spain, through the Pyrenees and into the Alps.  Since then, the land mass that includes Corsica and Sardinia has moved south-eastwards and rotated anticlockwise to its present position. Though the topography is dominated by igneous and metamorphic rocks there are some sedimentary rocks, particularly along the east-coast. There are only three small outcrops of limestone rocks, but these are disproportionately important for a number of endemic plants.

More than 130 plant taxa are endemic Corsica and another 75 are only known from the Corsican-Sardinian archipelago. Amongst these are two endemic monospecific genera (Morisia monanthos and Nananthea perpusilla) and a number of other paleoendemics. Some of these endemics are widespread within the island, such as the Corsican Hellebore (Helleborus lividus subsp. corsicus) and the Corsican crocus (Crocus corsicus). Others, such as Brassica insularis and a number of Limonium and Ophrys species, are restricted to limited lengths of coastline and to outcrops of limestone, respectively.

History Has Aided the Conservation of Corsica

Corsica has frequently suffered as a pawn in the power struggles of stronger neighbors. The Pisans, then the Genoese ruled the island for a long time, but Corsica's strategic importance and its vulnerability to seaborne invasion kept the political position of the island unstable until the very end of the 18^th century. Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the Island from the British in 1796 and, although he was born of a Corsican family and originally expressed ideas of Corsican nationalism, he did as much as anyone to Gallicise the island. Corsica's problems have not all been created by external powers. The code of the vendetta, which set family against family for generations, reached a peak at the turn of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. At this time, official records show that about 900 people were being murdered each year out of a population of about 120,000.

Fighting over the ownership of Corsica and under-investment by those rulers have encouraged emigration and has kept the population small. Between the 8^th and 18^th centuries raids from pirates and slavers forced people to inhabit villages away from the coast. Compounding the political difficulties the mountainous terrain makes communication and transportation difficult and restricts areas suitable for agriculture. Though potentially destructive activities such as overgrazing, charcoal production and timber extraction occur on Corsica they have been moderate, at least in comparison with other Mediterranean islands. Though these geographic and political factors have protected Corsican wildlife to some extent, they have done little to help the Corsican citizens, who have never been wealthy and often favoured their own leaders and system of justice over that of their overseas rulers.

A number of different organisations are involved in conservation on the island, but the largest is the organisation of the Parc Naturel Régional de Corse (PNRC). Founded in 1972 the PNRC covers almost a third of the island and protects an abundance of wildlife. It has a much broader mission than wildlife conservation. It also aims to protect the cultural heritage and the way of life of rural Corsica, while attempting to stimulate enterprise in the much-abandoned villages. While the PNRC oversees conservation in the mountainous centre of the island, many coastal sites are protected by the Conservatoire du Littoral. This is a national organisation dedicated to protecting coastal sites. Though there are many reserves and areas of botanical interest, two in particular deserve mention. Firstly, the Valley of the Fango River, which has been designated a biosphere reserve by UNESCO since 1977, and secondly, the neighboring reserve of Scandola, which is almost entirely inaccessible by land, but includes a large marine reserve. Together, these reserves contain some of the best preserved habitats in the Mediterranean basin. Not only are they important for their flora, but also for their populations of birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians and mammals.

Diverse Forests

Corsica has some extensive forests of native pines and oaks. Perhaps the most inspiring and emblematic are those of Corsican pine (Pinus nigra subsp. larico). These trees can grow to over 50m tall and can live for many hundreds of years. They form forests at altitudes between 900m and 1800m, which are important habitat not only for native plants, but also the endemic and elusive Corsican Nuthatch (Sitta whiteheadi). The variation in relief and rainfall around the island makes for varied forests. On the hills and mountains, in addition to Corsican Pine, are species such as Maritime Pine (Pinus pinaster); Yew (Taxus baccata); Flowering Ash (Fraxinus ornus); Holm Oak (Quercus ilex); Beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Silver Fir (Abies alba). While in wet areas there are Alders (Alnus glutinosa), Willows (Salix alba etc) and the Narrow-leaved Ash (Fraxinus angustifolia). There are also species one might not expect on a Mediterranean island for example Fragrant Alder (Alnus viridis subsp. suaveolens) is an endemic taxa of a species that is found in the mountains of central Europe, northern Asia and North America. It does not grow to much more than 3m, so cannot be called a forest tree, yet it does form dense stands in the sub-alpine zone (1600m-2100m), frequently together with the taller Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia subsp. praemorsa).

Osumda regalis

Wetlands

Wetlands habitats do not instantly spring to mind when thinking of the environment of Mediterranean islands; yet they contribute greatly to the overall biodiversity of Corsica. These habitats include coastal lagoons, marshes, seasonal ponds, rivers, streams, alpine lakes and bogs. Along the east coast are the largest lagoons, such as the Étang de Biguglia.  A literal translation of the word "étang" is "pond", though this is no pond, being 11km long and 2.5 km wide. The Étang de Biguglia is an important reserve for all sorts of creeping, flying and swimming wildlife, but it is also home to a number of rare plant species, including Kosteletzkya pentacarpos, a beautiful member of the Malvaceae. This species is found around the Mediterranean basin, but only where suitable marshland habitat exists.

 

Site Naturel de la Vallée du Fango

The tides around Corsica do not amount to more than 40cm, so saltmarshes like those on oceanic coasts are not found. Nevertheless, there are a number of saline "wetland" habitats, known in French as sansouire. These are characterised by winter inundation with seawater and then drying in the summer.  A number of halophytes, particularly halophytic members of the Chenopodiaceae (Salicornia, Sarcocornia etc), populate these highly saline habitats. Also near the coast are a number of freshwater ponds, some of which dry out during the summer. Unusual plants such as Baldellia ranunculoides, Ranunculus ophioglossifolius and Pilularia minuta can be found in these uncommon habitats.

The Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis), which has declined across northern Europe, is still common along streams in Corsica as well as in inundated woodlands. It is a species of shady wet habitats on acidic soils and in much of Europe it has been lost where these habitats have been drained. Corsica's rivers, streams and torrents are also home for several endemic species including Doronicum corsicum, Hypericum corsicum and Narthecium reverchonii.

Narthecium reverchonii Celak

 One of the unique wetland habitats of Corsica are the pozzines, which are found between altitudes of 1600m and 2200m. The pozzines are bogs that are frequently traversed by serpentine streams and are pitted with circular pools. These pools give the bogs their name, as the name possine is derived from the Corsican word for pit (Pozzi). Some of the species found in these bogs are more common in Northern Europe than the Mediterranean, for example Drosera rotundifolia and Menyanthes trifoliata, while others are unique to Corsica such as Pinguicula corsica, Bellis bernardii and Juncus requienii.

It is interesting to note that although the species epithets corsicum, corsicus and corsica are used extensively for the islands endemic plants, a number of other names are frequently encountered, for example soleirolii, reverchonii, briquetii and conradii. These names commemorate the botanists Captain Joseph Francois Soleirol (1796-1863); Elisée Reverchon (1835-1914); John Briquet (1870-1931) and Marcelle Conrad (1897-1990). Notice that these botanists were working at a time when the flora of continental France was largely described. Yet whole habitats such as the pozzines were unknown to scientists until the latter half of the twentieth century.

Risks To The Flora

With large areas of forests and scrub, fires are a serious issue on Corsica. Fires are usually started for one of three reasons. They may be unintentionally started; they may be started maliciously, or they may be started intentionally to clear land. At one time the European Union grant system for breeders of nursing cows led to an increase in fires. Farmers were using fires to increase their grazing land to comply with the requirements for subsidies; fortunately, these grants have now been suspended. The EEC has actually made many positive contributions to the island's economy including significant funds for fire prevention and protection on the island. There is a small army of people involved in fire fighting and they possess an arsenal of modern equipment such as recognisance planes and water bombers. Still, on average about 8,200 hectares are burnt each year. While much of the vegetation of the Mediterranean can recover rapidly from fires, even these habitats do not respond well to frequent fires, which contribute significantly to soil erosion.

Opuntia ficus-indica

Alien plants have been introduced to Corsica since at least the Roman period and many of those species, such as the Olive, are as much part of the landscape as the native plants. Yet modern introductions, many from different continents, present a threat to native plants. About 140 species have naturalised on the island and many others are planted or are casual. Two of the most destructive are the South African succulents Carpobrotus edulis and C. acinaciformis. These species form mats over coastal rocks, eliminating all other plants. Another South African introduction, Cotula coronopifolia, poses a threat to wetlands. In places, this plant has become the dominant species, eliminating practically all other herbs. A number of other potentially damaging species have naturalised or are planted such as Prickly Pear (Opuntia ficus-indica); Bermuda buttercup (Oxalis per-caprae) and several Eucalyptus species.

Changes in farming practices have had both positive and negative impacts on native plants. Since world war two there has been continual migration out of villages and a decline in traditional farming. The cultivation of chestnuts and the maintenance of terraces have declined in the hills, whereas in the lowlands vineyards have increased as has the growing of non-traditional crops such as kiwi fruit. At one time, the annual movements of livestock, known as transhumance, were an important element of agriculture in the mountains. However, these days the ancient mountain trackways are more frequently used as hiking trails.

Improvements in the roads and increased ownership of four wheel drive vehicles have made once remote corners of the island accessible. Even high altitude has not protected the pozzines from damage and popular hiking routes to the high mountain lakes have been rerouted where damage was occurring. With jeeps and motorbikes, tourists can visit once deserted beaches that are only accessible by rough tracks and these days damage to dune systems by motor-sports is common. Other risks include the collection of wild plants for gardens or for their medicinal properties. Wetlands are particularly vulnerable as they can easily be drained or overgrazed.

One should not overplay the risks though. Corsicans, in general, are proud of their environmental heritage and one can hardly deny the Corsicans the improvements in lifestyle that decent roads and an adequate infrastructure bring. Here, I can only give a flavour of the flora of Corsica and hint at the conservation challenges. I encourage you to learn more about Corsica, even though you may need to learn some French to do so. Corsica's history has protected its wildlife to some extent, but in the future, it will be a challenge to balance the aspirations of the people with environmental protection. Still, in this respect, Corsica is not unique and it is fortunate to have a population and institutions friendly towards environmental protection.

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Help conservation and science by being more proactive in managing your copyright

Botanical floras are subject to copyright, In the UK you are prohibited from copying someone's text until 70 years after their death, although there are some limited exceptions.

Copyright is automatic and protects you from someone else profiting from your work without your permission. This concept works well for J.K. Rowling, but it is a disaster for science and conservation. Why? Well, I expect most people do not write floras for money, but to communicate to other interested people. Floras are usually printed in small volumes, often only in one edition. Once they are sold out, they can be very hard to obtain. If a person of 25 wrote a flora, then that volume could pass out of copyright more than 100 year from now.
What does this mean in practise? People who want to reuse floras for research and conservation can’t. Historical publications are essential for understanding change in our flora. They contain information about the present that will be an invaluable source of information in the future. Floras contains all sorts of useful information, keys, pictures, descriptions and observations. They only have scientific value, and no one will make money from them. Just look at how useful open resources such as Wikipedia and the Biodiversity Heritage Library are. If you are an author be more proactive in managing your copyrights. Think about publishing with the creative commons CC-BY licence or perhaps put an embargo period on your licencing, after which the work becomes open-access.

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Let’s not blame climate change for all biogeographic change

Large numbers of biogeographical studies have demonstrated recent poleward range shifts and movement up altitudinal gradients of a variety of organisms (Bebber, Marriott, Gaston, Harris, & Scotland, 2007; Chen, Hill, Ohlemüller, Roy, & Thomas, 2011; Devictor, Julliard, Couvet, & Jiguet, 2008; Forero-Medina, Terborgh, Socolar, & Pimm, 2011; Groom, 2013; Hickling, Roy, Hill, Fox, & Thomas, 2006; Holzinger, Hülber, Camenisch, & Grabherr, 2007; Kelly & Goulden, 2008; Lenoir, Gégout, Marquet, de Ruffray, & Brisse, 2008; Leonelli, Pelfini, Morra di Cella, & Garavaglia, 2010; Parmesan & Yohe, 2003; Root et al., 2003; Smith, 1994; Sturm et al., 2001; Thomas & Lennon, 1999; Velásquez-Tibatá, Salaman, & Graham, 2012). The results of these studies are often referred to as the fingerprint of climate change on biodiversity. However, there are many manmade and environmental factors that have undergone far larger recent change than climate. These changes, either individually or in combination, can also explain these range shifts and we should not be so quick to implicate the climate.

Among the environmental factors that have changed significantly in the last 50-100 years are atmospheric nitrogen deposition; changes in grazing patterns, particularly in mountains; pollution changes, particularly acid rain and salt spreading; a doubling of the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere; a multifold increase in the distances and volume of the international horticultural trade; changes in land management; extensive greenhouse horticulture; heat islands caused by urbanization. In comparison to these factors, the climate has changed very little in the same period. All of these factors have been shown to affect organisms directly and many are known drivers of migration and/or extinction. Yet, papers continue to be published that stress the climate as an explanation.

Mankind is by far the most important disperser of plants and probably also animals and microorganisms (Mack & Lonsdale, 2001). Manmade habitat disturbance impinges on practically all ecosystems of the earth. Even in the Artic, which has experienced the greatest climate change so far, acid rain and atmospheric nitrogen deposition have a significant impact on the vegetation (Bobbink et al., 2010; Sarah J. Woodin, 1997). Manmade disturbance is often portrayed as a destructive influence on natural habitats but in reality its influence is more often for change rather than destruction.

In my own research on the native plants of Great Britain, northerly range shifts could be seen in many species since 1978 (Groom, 2013). However, these changes cannot be explained by the plant’s preferred climate envelope, but are more easily explained by other factors such as habitat change and pollution.

We should be careful about jumping to conclusions about the causes of biogeographic range shifts. It makes sense to look for explanations of change among the factors that have changed the most and only once these factors have been eliminated should one start looking for explanations elsewhere. While climate change will eventually have a large impact on the distribution of organisms, the focus on it as an explanation for all range shifts is obscuring other possible explanations and distorting our view of the changes in biogeography.

References

Bebber, D. P., Marriott, F. H. C., Gaston, K. J., Harris, S. A., & Scotland, R. W. (2007). Predicting unknown species numbers using discovery curves. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 274(1618), 1651–8. doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.0464

Bobbink, R., Hicks, K., Galloway, J., Spranger, T., Alkemade, R., Ashmore, M., Bustamante, M., et al. (2010). Global assessment of nitrogen deposition effects on terrestrial plant diversity: a synthesis. Ecological Applications, 20(1), 30–59. doi:10.1890/08-1140.1

Chen, I., Hill, J. K., Ohlemüller, R., Roy, D. B., & Thomas, C. D. (2011). Rapid range shifts of species associated with high levels of climate warming. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6045), 1024–6. doi:10.1126/science.1206432

Devictor, V., Julliard, R., Couvet, D., & Jiguet, F. (2008). Birds are tracking climate warming, but not fast enough. Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 275(1652), 2743–8. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0878

Forero-Medina, G., Terborgh, J., Socolar, S. J., & Pimm, S. L. (2011). Elevational ranges of birds on a tropical montane gradient lag behind warming temperatures. PloS one, 6(12), e28535. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028535

Groom, Q. J. (2013). Some poleward movement of British native vascular plants is occurring, but the fingerprint of climate change is not evident. PeerJ, 1, e77. doi:10.7717/peerj.77

Hickling, R., Roy, D. B., Hill, J. K., Fox, R., & Thomas. (2006). The distributions of a wide range of taxonomic groups are expanding polewards. Global Change Biology, 12(3), 450–455. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01116.x

Holzinger, B., Hülber, K., Camenisch, M., & Grabherr, G. (2007). Changes in plant species richness over the last century in the eastern Swiss Alps: elevational gradient, bedrock effects and migration rates. Plant Ecology, 195(2), 179–196. doi:10.1007/s11258-007-9314-9

Kelly, A. E., & Goulden, M. L. (2008). Rapid shifts in plant distribution with recent climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(33), 11823–6. doi:10.1073/pnas.0802891105

Lenoir, J., Gégout, J. C., Marquet, P. A., De Ruffray, P., & Brisse, H. (2008). A significant upward shift in plant species optimum elevation during the 20th century. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5884), 1768–71. doi:10.1126/science.1156831

Leonelli, G., Pelfini, M., Morra di Cella, U., & Garavaglia, V. (2010). Climate Warming and the Recent Treeline Shift in the European Alps: The Role of Geomorphological Factors in High-Altitude Sites. AMBIO, 40(3), 264–273. doi:10.1007/s13280-010-0096-2

Mack, R. N., & Lonsdale, W. M. (2001). Humans as Global Plant Dispersers: Getting More Than We Bargained For. BioScience, 51(2), 95. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0095:HAGPDG]2.0.CO;2

Parmesan, C., & Yohe, G. (2003). A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature, 421(6918), 37–42. doi:10.1038/nature01286

Root, T. L., Price, J. T., Hall, K. R., Schneider, S. H., Rosenzweig, C., & Pounds, J. A. (2003). Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature, 421(6918), 57–60. doi:10.1038/nature01333

Sarah J. Woodin. (1997). Effects of acid deposition on arctic vegetation. In S. J. Woodin & M. Marquiss (Eds.), Ecology of Arctic Environments 13th Special Symposium of the British Ecological Society (p. 292). Cambridge University Press.

Smith, R. (1994). Vascular plants as bioindicators of regional warming in Antarctica. Oecologia, (January), 322–328. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00627745

Sturm, M., Racine, C., Tape, K., Cronin, T. W., Caldwell, R. L., & Marshall, J. (2001). Increasing shrub abundance in the Arctic. Nature, 411(May), 546.

Thomas, C., & Lennon, J. (1999). Birds extend their ranges northwards. Nature, 399(May), 6505. Retrieved from http://docencia.izt.uam.mx/hcg/cursoact_CC/material_adicional/399213a0.pdf

Velásquez-Tibatá, J., Salaman, P., & Graham, C. H. (2012). Effects of climate change on species distribution, community structure, and conservation of birds in protected areas in Colombia. Regional Environmental Change, 13(2), 235–248. doi:10.1007/s10113-012-0329-y

Update 13 Aug. 2014: An example of a publication implicating grazing changes in tree line movements Aakala, T, Hari P, Dengel S, Newberry SL, Mizunuma T, Grace J (2014) prominent stepwise advance of the tree line in North-East Finland DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12308

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Fueling botanical recording in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales

The Botanical Society's Recorder’s Conference is over for 2013, but this is not an end, just a pit stop in the collection of botanical data. Now that the field season draws to a close, this event is an opportunity for the botanists of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales to share knowledge, argue about policies, meet friends and make new ones.
At this year’s conference, some of the presentations were the taxonomy of Dactylorhiza and Orchis; on escaped alien ferns; on willows and poplars; on rare plants of Somerset; on the flora of Tristan da Cunha and on errors in botanical recording.

Britain and Ireland’s field botanists are a well-motivated, confident group whose work means that these are probably the best surveyed countries in the world and they do this largely out of their own pockets.

Now that I am botanically recharged I am confident in the continued progress the Botanical Society is making towards the study of the north-western European flora. We have many challenges ahead of us . We need to look forward to the next atlas of the flora; to the challenges of conservation; to monitoring change and to recruiting and training the next generation of field botanists. However, it is obvious at the conference that we have the people who can do the job and the enthusiasm to fuel it.

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Taxonomy can't just be a glorified hobby

One of my contributions to the pro-iBiosphere project is a report on the use of digital technology among taxonomists (Groom et al., 2013). In the preparation of this report I got to talk to many taxonomists about their work and their expectations for the future. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that all taxonomists are passionate and dedicated to what they do. Indeed, unlike most professions, if they weren't paid to do it they would do it for free. Many retired taxonomists continue their work unpaid and many employed taxonomists self-fund their own research.

Isn't this fantastic? We are told that there are literally millions of undescribed organisms and we have an enthusiastic group of people who don’t even need paying to do the work. Well of course there is a catch, people who are under-resourced, under-appreciated and expected to work based on their passion for the subject will do the work exactly in the way they want to. So it is not unusual  for a taxonomist to publish their magnum opus in an obscure publication, with a print run of less than 100 with no digitally accessible version. Indeed, it is a particular quirk of the international codes for biological nomenclature that anyone can publish names for organisms, anywhere and without peer review. This certainly contributes to a general disrespect among scientists for taxonomy.

Yet, with no funding there is no requirement on taxonomists to work on economically important species; nor is there a requirement to publish taxonomy digitally and make it accessible to the people who need it, in language they can read. Furthermore, taxonomists have no incentive to maintain a stable or complete taxonomy free from ambiguity.

Moreover, codes of biological nomenclature are decided upon democratically within the taxonomic community, but without consultation with the users of taxonomy. In them are many rules to ensure that taxonomists get credit for describing new taxa, but few to ensure that taxonomic names act as a unique stable identifier of taxa in a digital world.

If the beneficiaries of taxonomy want a stable and a usable system of names for the life on earth then these users will have to start demanding this and paying for it. And if taxonomists want funding for their work and respect for their profession they have to start asking what the users want and start providing it.

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Groom, Q., Agosti, D., Güntsch, A., Hovenkamp, P., Eralt, E., Mietchen, D., Paton, A. & Sierra, S. (2013) The Use of e-Tools among Producers of Taxonomic Knowledge. Figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.785738 Retrieved 09:51, Sep 01, 2013 (GMT)

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

A new site for a rare species

Yesterday, the family and I took a boat trip to the tiny island of Burhou, off the coast of Alderney in the Channel Islands. Burhou is a reserve for puffins (Fratercula arctica) and storm petrels (Hydrobates pelagicus). However, there weren't many birds to see as the puffins have already finished breeding and the storm petrels only return to their nests at night. Nevertheless, this gave me plenty of opportunity to look for plants, without disturbing nesting birds.

Fewer than 50 species of plant have ever been recorded from Burhou and nothing rare, so it it came as a surprise to me to not only find a new species for the island, but one of the rarest British species, Rumex rupestris (shore dock). Britain is the world stronghold for Rumex rupestris, but even here the total population is estimated to be less than 650 plants (see a full description of its status at the JNCC website). The last record of this species nearby was in 1958 on Alderney.

Below is a picture of Rumex rupestris showing its large smooth tubercules and Rumex crispus like leaves.

This work by Quentin Groom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.