The Big List

I'm working away at my Big List, my Pan-species List. Birders famously have lists, for twitchers the target used to be 400, to join the 400 Club, I believe the stakes are higher these days. In my more birdy days my bird self-found list was the big deal, and the target was 300. My birding self-found list is 286, I must sort out the Bean Goose on the list, and Bubo listing is weird about Fea's Petrel which I've found twice (because it can't be split from two other species in the field, however, Bubo allows all sorts of crazy botanical hybrids and unidentifiable other stuff, but I'll get on to that later) - you can tell I'm kind of grumpy about the Fea's thing! The last addition to the list was Eye-browed Thrush which I found in our Orkney garden about a year ago now.

I do rather like a list. At our new home in Perthshire I have a patch and so a patch birding list, currently a quite respectable 76 since mid-May. I have a garden pan-species list, only things I categorise as wild are included, it stands at 376, but I've a few outstanding things to add, Pied Wagtail on the roof of the house the other day for instance (not bad for a tennis court sized garden). However, the big deal is my full UK (actually Scotland, Wales and England) pan-species list. I'm busy trying to get this list up-to-date,from past records on iRecord, as well as adding new stuff.

Dicranopalpus ramosus, on the wall of the house.

The above Opilione is nearly the latest find. You'll probably have seen these on the wall of your house, or garage. Pretty distinctive things, except they're not. In 2015 it was discovered that there are two quite similar looking Dicranopalpus species in the UK. There are no obvious ID criteria for this species online, (there is an otherwise excellent interactive Field Studies Council key to Opiliones here - https://harvestmen.fscbiodiversity.uk/ ) instead you have to search out the 2015 paper by Hay Wijnhoven & Carlos E. Prieto 2015 (DICRANOPALPUS CAUDATUS DRESCO, 1948: NOT A SYNONYM OF DICRANOPALPUS RAMOSUS SIMON, 1909 BUT A VALID SPECIES AFTER ALL and use the illustrations and information within to make the identification. This involves euthanising the specimen and dissecting it.

Dicranopalpus ramosus, close up of body, alive.

Apophysis of the pedipalp, in the female, which this is, Apophysis is just a tad shorter than the tibia.

Base of the femur of the pedipalp. This apophysis is longer and slightly curved in D. ramosus.

Pedipalp claw, the "teeth" are longer and more even in D. ramosus.

The text of the paper is a tad confusing, however, the illustrations are wonderfully clear. Personally, I suspect this is all a bit of a fuss, because in life D. caudatus is considerably smaller than D. ramosus I believe, and a bit of a different shape. Things are now slightly more confused as a third Dicranopalpus species has been found in the UK, however, apparently that does look distinctly different and it's not just down to size, it would be easily recognisable in the field. All three species are adventives, they've arrived in UK by some sort of human agency, spiders seem to be especially good at that trick.

I've just found Pseudeuophrys lanigera again this is a fairly recent arrival in the UK also, 1930s I think.

Pseudeuophrys lanigera, a spider that is identifiable in the field, unfortunately this one didn't survive capture.

The BBC 4 documentary, The Magic of Mushrooms is well worth a watch. There are a lot of fungi here in Perthshire. I've just added all my fungi so far to my P-S list.  I've been trying to identify the fungi I've found and not having a book I've used AI and web resources. The book arrived this week so I will go through and check anything I think is dodgy. The AI is a useful learning tool, I use Obsidentify initially, then check images online and with the Danish picture AI tool. I'm just beginning to get the hang of some families and genera. Fungi are a bit of a nightmare as regards what is and what is not a species and I'm sure I will need to adjust my list from these early ID attempts as I learn more about the pitfalls. In addition, I've had some somewhat "over-enthusiastic verification" occur, with some revision by an expert human of AI identifications. On further checking with other humans the AI got these correctly in the first place and they were not species new or very, very rare in the UK (this did not occur on iRecord, I hasten to add). 

Mucidula mucida, Porcelain Fungus, a very beautiful small thing when fresh.

Obsidentify thought these were Leotia lubrica Jellybaby, they were re-identified by a human as a species unknown in the UK, but further research suggests that these are probably better described as Leotia lubrica senso lato (a species complex, and therefore not tickable for PSL, although they are currently listed there as a single species.)

Anyway, I rather liked these Angel Wings.

Pleurocybella porrigens Angel Wings.

I've added all my fungi to my PSL list today, it's not a huge number, but I've probably doubled the total in the last month or so. The new book, I bought the Collins Fungi Guide will help sort a few things out, but a compound microscope is a tool I need if I'm going to do these properly.

Back to the PSL on Bubo https://panspecieslisting.com/

It is a great site for us listers, and I'm only a bit grumpy - I'm not allowed Feral Cat as well as Fea's Petrel by the list. You can make up your own rules really - I include dead things if I find them myself, but I don't include unoccupied leafmines and galls, I have to actually see the beastie, not just its signs. I try to be consistent across orders, so I would not include hybrid plants, as I don't include hybrid Tufted Duck as something separate, for example. I mostly don't include species groups, and do try to get to species senso stricto, but as noted above this is not always clear; taxonomy is never fixed. My current list total is 1,806 species, I've probably got a few hundred things to add from iRecord, maybe not that many. I suspect my actual list total is about 2,000 species, so a bit of a low lister really!