I have written previously on the importance of modern media as a way of bringing 'new blood' into biological recording and the need to embrace this new paradigm. The Hoverfly Recording Scheme has done so for many years and I think the dividends are there for all to see: we have seen a massive increase in recorder effort but have also started to recognise that this sort of effort is unsustainable without a fundamental change in the way recording schemes are organised, taxonomic guides are written and perhaps even in the way taxonomists work to describe species.
Live animal taxonomy is a challenge, and probably cannot be taken to the refinement that is possible with preserved specimens and modern molecular analysis. BUT, it is likely to be the major source of data in the future and we really need to understand its implications for data analysis and for conversion of these analyses into land management policies. This paradigm shift has been the driving influence behind my interest in photographic recording and trying to understand and quantify what is possible.
After at least eight years of data extraction from photographs, I think we are in a strong position to analyse the potential of photographic recording for hoverflies. The sheer scale of the data arriving is obvious (figure 1), but what does it really mean in terms of the spread of species recorded? Furthermore, are the numbers of records translated into something useful for land management policy? More analysis is needed to come to any firm conclusions but the data do suggest that at least for hoverflies there is potential to use photographic recording for certain analyses. The spread of species is substantial (over 150 species in 2016) and, as can be seen from Figure 2, the tail of irregularly reported species is long. At the moment I am far from clear how this compares with traditional data and will have to access the full dataset to gather a better understanding of this relationship.
|Figure 1. Monthly records of hoverflies based solely on photographs extracted from Flickr, iSpot and Facebook|
|Figure 2. Composition of the 2016 dataset (23,790 records)|
|Figure 3. The 20 most frequently reported species each month in 2016 organised in rank order for each month.|