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How fungus records are used
- 1. Fungus records: how are they used? Clare Blencowe misidentifyingfungi.blogspot.comSxBRC Manager ALERC Chair Presentation to the British Mycological Society Group Leaders’ Meeting, 16 June 2018
- 2. Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre • We are an impartial provider of environmental information services encompassing biodiversity, geodiversity and other aspects of Sussex’s natural capital • We work in partnership with data users and data providers • We are not for profit and hosted by Sussex Wildlife Trust • We are one of many local environmental record centres situated around the UK
- 3. Association of Local Environmental Record Centres • A community interest company formed in 2009 – providing a central voice for LERCs • We raise awareness of the services that LERCs provide • We run an LERC accreditation system • We support LERCs in developing and improving their services • We are an active member of the NBN Network
- 4. a little bit about me
- 8. It depends! Fungus records: how are they used?
- 9. How has the record been captured? How has the record been shared?
- 10. What do we know about the quality of the record?
- 11. Data flow
- 12. Output from data flow workshop discussion. NBN conference 2016.
- 13. Output from SBIF Review data flow workshop. September 2017.
- 15. How to you capture your fungus records? Where do they go?
- 16. It depends! Fungus records: how are they used? OK. But assuming people can access the records, what do they do with them?
- 17. SCIENCE!
- 18. Conservation Species designations Criteria for SSSI guidelines Assessment of nationally & internationally important sites Red Listing
- 20. Informing planning and development
- 21. BUT – information only as good as the framework of species designations which we use to focus and filter information. Some LERCs work with local mycologists to develop local lists.
- 22. Site surveys
- 23. Monitoring
- 25. Projects
- 26. Wealden Meadows Soil Fungi baseline data CHEGD species mapping
- 28. Natural history
- 30. Hypocreaceae Diversity in Sussex Image | Nick Aplin
- 31. Image | Peter Fishenden Cortinarius sobrius – new to East Sussex (and the UK)
- 32. Local Wildlife Site systems aka Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation, County Wildlife Sites
- 33. Identifying biodiversity interest features
- 34. BUT – we’ve barely scratched the surface.
- 35. Examples from Sussex citations
- 38. You don’t have to just take my word for it.
- 40. Guidance on the definition of non-commercial use
- 42. Sharing your fungus records can result in them being used for a multitude of different things.
- 43. In conclusion • Accessible fungus records are used for many different purposes • Local environmental record centres can help mobilise records, so that they can be used to inform local projects and decision-making • Sharing records under a ‘non-commercial’ licence is a barrier to local environmental record centres accessing and using records – but we can find ways around these if we work together • It would be great to see fungus records being used more – let’s keep working on that!
Editor's Notes
- The map on the right shows the UK’s local environmental record centre network. Areas in green show record centres which are members of ALERC. Areas in red are where the record centre hasn’t joined ALERC, or has an operating model which doesn’t fit with ALERC’s membership requirements.
- Notes from my first fungal foray – aged 9. It would have been led by Audrey Thomas under the auspices of Haslemere Museum / Natural History Society. There are the makings of a proper biological record here: Bachelors Button is an old name for Bulgaria inquinans. I looked to see if I could find the record on the old Fungal Records Database of Britain & Ireland (FRDBI1), perhaps submitted by Audrey, but no such luck.
- I grew up and got distracted by other things. But seeing this Crepidotus species on a Boxing Day walk reignited my interest in fungi. I’d recently started working at Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre where promoting biological recording is a big part of my job. And since I’d given up a long commute I found myself with some more spare time. That’s when I started my blog: misidentifyingfungi.blogspot.com.
- Joining my local fungus recording groups – Sussex Fungus Group (pictured here checking out the fungi on an old Beech tree) and the West Weald Fungus Recording Group – really helped me develop my knowledge and identification skills. And it wasn’t long before I was generating some fungus records myself.
- So – back to the subject of this presentation: how are fungus records used? It depends!
- There would never have been a record for this fungus if it hadn’t been for the eagle-eyes of Lukas Large from the Lost & Found Fungi (LAFF) project. My husband posted these pretty mushrooms on Twitter and Lukas spotted that they look like Mycena renati – a rare bonnet mushroom. Lukas made sure the record details were captured and made available to others via the LAFF database at Kew.
- Data quality – or ‘validation and verification’, to use the biological recording lingo – will have an effect on how records are used. Good quality data is infinitely more useful than bad data, hence the old adage: “if in doubt, leave it out”.
- You can’t really talk seriously about how records are used without touching on the subject of ‘data flow’. The NBN Strategy sets out various steps on the ‘data flow pathway’, from when a record is first generated through to the end user. It makes it look very straight forward and logical.
- With lots of different organisations involved in generating and managing biological records, for different reasons – data flow can get very complicated!
- There is a review of biological recording infrastructure going on in Scotland at the moment – the SBIF Review – which has been looking at data flow and how systems could be streamlined and improved.
- With data flow, the devil is really in the detail. Who is generating records? How are they being captured? Where are they sent? How are they being shared? This is my attempt at a simple schematic illustrating some of the complexity of ‘data flow’ for fungus records. Records submitted to the Fungal Records Database of Britain & Ireland (FRDBI) are shared with the NBN Atlas and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) under a Creative Commons – By Attribution – Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) licence. But it’s worth noting that the NBN Trust’s Guidance on the Definition of Non-commercial Use says that ‘cost-recovery’ and any use ‘directed at gaining planning consent’ is deemed to be ‘commercial’. This means that, although the records are being shared, local environmental record centres aren’t allowed to use them in the services they provide to local planning authorities and consultants. Many local fungus recording groups have set up data-exchange arrangements with their local environmental record centre (LERC) – because they want their records to be used in the services that LERCs supply. The Association of Local Environmental Record Centres is also keen to work directly with National Schemes and Societies (NSSs) to look at what arrangements we could put in place nationally to simplify data-flows and support data providers in getting their records used, in the ways NSSs want them to be used.
- Fungus records and collections can make an immensely valuable contribution to fungal science. I won’t say much about this, as not my area of expertise. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, check out the State of the World's Fungi Symposium which is happening at Kew on 13 & 14 September 2018. (I’m going – it’s a bit pricey but thought I’d treat myself.)
- Fungus records are used by scientists and nature conservation bodies to inform the framework of species and site designations designed to protect biodiversity.
- Local environmental record centres, such as Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre where I work, use biological records in their ecological data search services – making records accessible to a wide range of data users.
- Local Planning Authorities, developers and their consultants need access to biodiversity information to inform the planning process. Biological records are used to inform ecological appraisals – identifying potential threats to biodiversity and opportunities for biodiversity enhancements. Local environmental record centres offer services which are tailored towards meeting these requirements.
- Relatively few fungus species have a recognised nature conservation designation. This can make it easy for fungal biodiversity interest to be overlooked in a standard ecological data search. One way around this is to develop local lists which can be used to highlight species, or assemblages, which are considered to be important from a nature conservation perspective. But this isn’t a trivial task – it relies on having good data and access to mycological expertise.
- Here’s Sussex Fungus Group at Seaford Head nature reserve, looking for fungi on the Moon Carrot. Knowing where species are present on a particular site can help to inform decisions about how the site is managed – and protect the fungal diversity.
- The West Weald Fungus Recording Group undertakes annual surveys at a number of different sites including Ebernoe Common – a stronghold for the Garlic Parachute Marasmius alliaceus. This provides valuable monitoring information which can help to detect long-term changes in fungal communities, and inform management of the site.
- Fungus records are also used to inform our knowledge of species distribution. Modern databases such as the new Fungal Records Database of Britain & Ireland (FRDBI2) make it easy to plot the distribution of records. The map shows my little hobby project – mapping distribution of Spring Hazelcup Encoelia furfuracea around my village.
- Many fungus recording groups and individual field mycologists use fungus records in their own projects – studying particular taxonomic groups or assemblages of species linked to important habitats, such as waxcap grasslands.
- Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre is using fungus records at the moment to identify sites which are important for fungi of the family Clavariacaeae, the genus Hygrocybe, the genus Entoloma, the family Geoglossaceae and the genus Dermoloma, or ‘CHEGDs’ – so that this information can help to inform plans for meadow restoration and creation in the High Weald.
- Believe it or not, just moments before this photo was taken, all those people were looking at the slime mould on the left hand side of the photo. Biological recording can be a great way of getting people involved in learning about fungi (and myxomycetes!) and more actively engaged in nature conservation.
- Fungus recording can also help to inform our knowledge of natural history – and be a way of accessing the joy that comes from closely observing the natural world.
- In Sussex we publish this annual review of wildlife recording in Sussex featuring contributions from the local biological recording community. Over the years we’ve had many fascinating articles on the discoveries of local mycologists and fungus recording groups. The ‘Adastra’ publication helps to bring these to a wider audience of people interested in Sussex’s natural history.
- As well as internationally and nationally protected sites, such as SSSIs, many parts of the UK also have systems for identifying Local Wildlife Sites.
- Local Wildlife Sites are selected based on their biodiversity interest features, and must meet criteria which are set locally. They have no statutory protection, but Local Planning Authorites can choose to protect Local Wildlife Sites through their Local Plan policies.
- With limited resources for site surveys, and with mycologists being relatively scarce, Local Wildlife Site surveys will often focus mainly on botanical interest and presence of ‘priority habitats’. However, some Local Sites Partnerships – such as in Cheshire – have developed detailed criteria for selecting Local Wildlife Sites based on their fungal diversity.
- Relatively few Local Wildlife Sites in Sussex have been selected based on their fungal diversity, but we do have some sites where assemblages of rare grassland fungi are recognised as an important feature. Would be great to have more!
- Fungus records may also be used locally in identifying road verges which are important for wildlife. This is the case in Norfolk, where Norfolk Biodiversity Information Centre tells me fungus records are used in roadside nature reserve management.
- And of course fungus records are used every day by individual mycologists, biological recorders and naturalists who are just interested, and want to put their own observations into context.
- As I mentioned earlier, over a million records from the original Fungal Records Database of Britain and Ireland (FRDBI1) are shared via the NBN Atlas, under a Creative Commons – By Attribution – Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) licence.
- This is an excerpt from the NBN’s Guidance on the definition of non-commercial use, setting out some of the uses which are not permitted under an ‘NC’ licence. Under the terms of use of the NBN Atlas, data users can be charged if they breach these licence conditions. See: https://docs.nbnatlas.org/data-licenses/breach-licence-conditions/
- Openly accessible usage statistics on the NBN Atlas show how many times records from the FRDBI dataset have been downloaded. The records will have been used many more times than this, as people can also view and explore them on the NBN Atlas.