Written by Tom August
Members of the recording community joined staff from the Biological Records Centre (BRC) past and present to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BRC earlier this month. Bath University played host to a two day symposium of talks exploring the causes of change in species distributions and considering the opportunities scientific and technological developments present biological recorders. The meeting finished with an entertaining day’s field trip to Salisbury Plain Training Area, hosted by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.
Established in 1964, the Biological Records Ccentre has been supporting biological recording for 50 years, principally through close collaboration with recording schemes and societies. BRC’s work has played a major role within the NBN. Throughout this time the biological records provided by the volunteer recording community have enabled BRC, alongside the schemes and societies, to significantly increase our understanding of the natural world and have helped to inform policies to protect the environment.
David Roy (Head of BRC) opened the symposium with a look back at the people who have helped to shape the BRC over the years, setting up a theme that ran throughout many of the talks that followed; the importance of many individuals. We heard from Michael Pocock (BRC) about the great science that can be done using citizen scientists, a point that was picked up by Oli Pescott (BRC) who reflected on a pollution monitoring project using lichens undertaken by school children in the 1970’s.
The use of data to detect changes in distribution and abundance of species was the subject of a number of talks. Helen Roy (BRC) discussed the importance of volunteer data as an early warning system to detect the arrival of invasive alien species while Bethan Purse (CEH) highlighted the use of biological records for modelling disease spread. Suzanne Mason (BRC, PhD Student) and Mark Hill (BRC, retired) considered the impact of climate change on northern range margins and boreal plants respectively. Nick Isaac (BRC) discussed the issue of bias in volunteer collected data and presented a number of new methods that may improve trend estimates and Dirk Maes (INBO, Brussels) discussed how trend estimates of this type can be used to compile IUCN red lists. The importance of having trend estimates was discussed by Deborah Proctor (JNCC) whose talk focussed on the role of volunteer recording in supporting nature conservation policy.
Chris Preston (BRC) spoke with authority and passion about plant hybrids, questioning whether they were deserving of the label “Nature’s dross”. Chris Thomas (University of York) discussed the importance of protected areas for conservation, drawing on his vast experience in this area of research and Jeremy Thomas (Oxford University) talked with great enthusiasm about trends in distribution of early succession species.
It was also interesting to hear talks from other colleagues who have worked closely with BRC in recent years. Mark Gurney (RSPB) reflected on recent extinctions in the UK as well as the arrival of new species, Richard Fox (Butterfly Conservation) spoke about trends in moth species based on the impressive NMRS dataset which boasts 17 million records, and Alan Stewart (Sussex University) highlighted the importance of understanding species interactions for predicting changes in distribution.
The final session of the two-day symposium discussed the future of biological recording. Tom August (BRC) and Lori Lawson Handley (University of Hull) discussed different aspects of technology. Tom considered the impacts of technology on the quality, quantity and diversity of data that is gathered, while Lori spoke about the fascinating possibilities of eDNA which are likely to have a large impact on the biological recording community. Tom Oliver (BRC) led the audience through a discussion of the importance of predicting future changes in our biodiversity and the challenges that researchers face in making these predictions, closing the final session of the symposium.
Bill Sutherland gave an eloquent summary of the symposium. Bill highlighted the importance of the work BRC has carried out over the past 5 decades and expressed hope that new methods and technologies will lead to another exciting 50 years ahead.
It was a great pleasure to hear from speakers who have had an immeasurable impact in the field of conservation over several decades of research. It was also inspiring to meet so many of the people who have contributed in so many ways to the work of the BRC, particularly the volunteer recording community.
The BRC’s 50th anniversary brochure and a summary of tweets from the symposium can be found here.
Many of the talks presented at the symposium are being written up as papers within a special issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society celebrating the BRC’s 50th anniversary. This should be available in early 2015.
BRC Group shot showing staff, past and present c. Heather Lowther
