In the Garden of Eden

I had managed to book almost two weeks holiday from work. As soon as my shift was over, I showered, flung some stuff into the car and hit the road. My destination was Cornwall and my plan was simple; to spend a spell of time with my beautiful Polish maiden. It's a long drive from Skye to Cornwall and, despite making excellent time on the motorways, I didn't arrive until just before dawn. What I hadn't anticipated was to be side-swiped by Storm Ciaran, which I blundered into whilst crossing Bodmin Moor. I can't say I've ever driven through such ferocious rain before and I actually developed a dull ache in my forearms from trying to keep the car from being gusted clean off the road! I eventually made it into the sheltered back lanes but, having already made my way around a number of smaller trees partially blocking the road, my route was entirely blocked by a large fallen tree, complete with the power lines it had pulled down. Bugger. The resultant detour was not a short one. The storm had by now passed, and daylight was resolutely forcing its way through the heavy cloud cover by the time I reached Portscatho. A short while later and I was knocking the window in an attempt to rouse my princess. The door opened, she smiled a sleepy smile, and then we stayed indoors for several days. 'Reacquainting', I think you could probably call it...

Eventually, after three days of 'reacquainting' until we could reacquaint no more, cabin fever set in and I suggested we visit the Eden Project. An hour later we were walking through the entrance of the Rainforest Biome. The last (and first) time I visited Eden Project was in 2014. My initial impressions inside the biome were that it was a lot more vegetated than I recalled and that it was nowhere near as humid and sweat-inducing as the last time I was here. Personally I wasn't complaining. 

The Eden biomes are so huge I've had to stitch two images together to fit them all in! 

I was here for two reasons, firstly because Kami had never been here before and on a wet day it seemed like a sensible place for us to visit. And secondly, having looked through BUBO Listing pages to see what other folks had seen that I hadn't, I realised that it held a handful of lifers for me. If only everyone would fill in the place/date columns on their BUBO lists! We grinned at the small forest-partridges running around (probably eating all my lifers...) and then entered properly.

A short way inside the entrance to the Rainforest Biome stood a large sign telling us about several of the inhabitants that occur here. 

The tiny Technomyrmex albipes was abundant everywhere, seen here on a yellow sign

I'd seen the ant and Australian Cockroach before, but Surinam Cockroach would be a lifer for me

I wondered how best to search for the cockroaches, it seemed unlikely they would be simply walking around on the path ahead of me. I spotted ropes looped around handrails and wondered if anything would be hiding away within. Kami quickly got in on the act and started checking too, which I was pleasantly surprised to see. Invertebrates generally get squished against the wall whenever Kami is nearby.

Despite checking quite a few rope loops all we could find were Australian Cockroach nymphs

No luck with the Surinam Cockroaches, but there would be other things to find, of that I was certain. 

Hmmm...not quite what I had in mind!

The only adult Australian Cockroach that we found was this squashed one

My main target, other than Surinam Cockroach (of which we never did find any) was a tropical earwig, reputedly quite easy to find by lifting objects sitting in soil. Annoyingly, all the ornamental stones were all cemented into place, but I spied a couple of large plant pots sitting in front of a wooden hut. Nobody appeared to be watching me very closely, so I lifted the pots and straight away disturbed a small earwig, which immediately began burying itself in the loose gravel

Nymph Euborellia sp, my first tropical earwig

Euborellia habbo shot

I was initially somewhat confused as to which species I'd found. I was expecting Euborellia arcanum which have deep yellow legs, not pale ones with dark rings as seen here. There's a second hothouse-restricted earwig that occurs in Britain, the Ring-legged Earwig (Euborellia annulipes) and I thought it was that. But then I realised the pincers were the wrong colour and so I then wondered if it was a species 'new' to Britain. Luckily for me, Mark Telfer, the king of finding weird stuff new to Britain, later assured me that my earwig was simply an immature Euborellia arcanum, this being the only earwig species known from the rainforest biome. Still, it's a big place and I'm sure there are plenty of 'new to Britain' species awaiting discovery. Mostly fungal pathogens I expect, but quite probably a few inverts too. I found this image of a 2mm long camel spider (Solifugae) that was sieved from the Eden Project soil, though presumably from inside the Mediterranean Biome. I wonder if they're breeding, or have been refound/identified yet? Euborellia arcanum is number 6840 on my PSL and my third species of earwig in Britain, which is about half the species on offer. More work required.

A little further along the path I hit earwig jackpot. Several pieces of slate were laying on an earthern bank, each with a minimum of four or five adult Euborellia arcanum hiding beneath. My earwig tally suddenly shot up from one to over twenty! These were almost exclusively adults, all exhibiting deep yellow legs. Rather annoyingly they all sped off in different directions as soon as I uncovered them, and for some unknown reason I'd disabled the LED on my camera and turned the ISO setting to about 200. In a dimly lit environment. Foolish boy.

One of the maybe twenty or so blurry Euborellia arcanum found hiding beneath bits of slate

Kami quickly grew bored of watching earwigs. She can be a bit strange like that.

We wandered the Rainforest Biome for at least another hour, then continued through into the far less humid Mediterranean Biome. I had noticed several Robins and Dunnocks plus a single Wren in the biomes which doesn't say very much for the site biosecurity. I mean, if birds can get in, what on earth could get out? 

Kami had to make a family phonecall, which lasted for probably twenty minutes. Ideal, that gave me plenty of time to do a thorough check beneath the mass of loose stones sat in dry gravel along the raised borders. Within moments I was eye-balling several very fast, pale woodlice with noticeably stepped body outlines. Oooh, they're certainly not native to Britain! I grabbed my camera and, after tinkering with the settings, started taking pics.  

I didn't know what species these could be, and I hadn't come to Cornwall with any of my entomological or collecting gear. I just hoped it was a species already known from within the biome and not a possible 'new to Britain' species. I took more pics, noticing while I did so that some individuals were paler than the rest whilst a couple were very noticeably darker and more strongly patterned. I concentrated on the body shape, the uropods and the flagella and came to the conclusion it was probably a single-species population exhibiting a range of pigment colouration. At least that's what I hoped I was seeing. Then a Porcellio scaber blundered through, dashing my hopes that only one species occured here. 

Assorted images of my mystery woodlouse species

There were also a few moderately large spiders hiding away amongst the stones, one of the Eratigena types I think. Again, I just took pics and hoped for the best. I haven't pursued the ID of these, without microscopically examining the pedipalps or epigyne of a mature animal (neither of which are particularly prominent in this genus) it's nothing much more than a guessing game.

Quite common between/beneath larger rocks in the dry bank alongside the path

Presumably telling her mum all about the exciting earwigs and woodlice we'd seen... 

It was a long phone call, spoken in very rapid Polish. In all honesty, I doubt there was very much chit-chat about hot-house invertebrates. But it did allow me time to do my nerdy nature stuff in peace and quiet. After I'd shown Kami the woodlice, and pointed out a few scale insects for good measure, we continued around the biome for another half hour or so. I preferred the Rainforest Biome, it just seems more invert-infested than the Mediterranean Biome does. 

I think these sculptures portray some sort of ancient beating tray and pooter usage?

I spent a little while trying to figure out the woodlouse and tentatively came to the conclusion that it could be Porcellionides sexfasciatus, which Mark Telfer readily agreed with once I'd sent him a selection of my images. It's a species already known from this biome, but not from anywhere else in Britain, as far as I know. Crippler! The BMIG page for it is here and you can read the paper describing it as new to Britain here. Porcellionides sexfasciatus is number 6841 on my PSL and my 24th species of woodlouse in Britain (25th if you include Sea Slater, which I'm not).

At some point during the course of our visit, I suggested to Kami that she could maybe consider putting her pan-species list up on the mighty BUBO Listing, after all she'd now seen Euborellia arcanum and Porcellionides sexfasciatus, both of which have terrific grippage value. She shot me a withering look and muttered something about nerds or sad people or something. Oh well, it was just a thought...

There was one final species that I hadn't seen yet, but ought to be here somewhere. I drew a blank in the biomes, but finally found it at the exit door from the shopping section to the outside world. Next to automatic sliding doors seems to be a favoured habitat for these spiders.

Uloborus plumipes aka the Hot-house Featherleg Spider

I had just a few more days with Kami before I was heading off to stay with Mark, Jo and Bradley Telfer on the Isle of Wight. They were still living in Bedfordshire when I last stayed with them, but Mark had already let slip that he was planning some sort of a whistlestop tour of the island for me. Bring it on, I say! 

BUBO

Many moons ago there were four Bristol Uni students who were all into birding and, between them, they formed the Bristol University Birdwatching Organisation, or BUBO for short (Bubo is also a genus of eagle owls, one of which adorns the BUBO logo; very clever these uni lads). They then went on to produce an online listing resource, whereby a user could upload their own personal species lists for pretty much anywhere in the world, whether it be a Site List, a British List, an Uzbekistan List or even an entire global World List. I currently have 24 lists on BUBO Listing, it used to be more but I binned various old ones that were no longer relevant (for example I deleted all of my British Year Lists, seeing as I've essentially left the birding scene and am no longer in competition with anybody).

Importantly, as well as being a great resource for birders to store their cherished lists online, absolutely everything was visible for any other user to search through and study. Within a few clicks you could see who had gone for the latest rarity, or where folks had ticked Somali Ostrich, discover who were the top listers in Surrey, or find out who had seen the most birds in Panama and where they'd gone to see them. Rich Fuller, my best friend at the time, was one of the founding BUBO members, as such I was one of the first to upload my own bird lists onto the website. It was all good fun, particularly when they added the Targets feature which allowed you to see what everyone else had ticked off that you hadn't! BUBO Listing has gone from strength to strength, consistently adding new and exciting features and, in my opinion, is about the best place out there for storing your global bird lists. 

And then it suddenly got even better.

Two of the original BUBO founders, Andy Musgrove, a Norfolk-based pan-species lister, and Mike Prince, who has recently returned to Britain after many years of living in India, have taken the hugely bold step of adding the entire UK Species Inventory onto BUBO and making it available for users to generate their own pan-species lists. Wow! I mean...just wow! They have employed the help of a couple of top pan-listers, mostly I think for advice and a bit of extra publicity, and in the last few weeks they have already uploaded British and Irish Lists for butterflies, moths, dragonflies, orthopteroids, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. So that's all the verts plus the more popular families of insects. Right now they are adding the plants, in manageable batches, so as not to overload existing users and, presumably, themselves. 

The whole process has generated a small degree of push back and some healthy discussion - why isn't Feral Cat listed, why should discarded pet terrapins and turtles be countable, surely plants of hybrid origin are tickable. But it's nothing that shouldn't be expected seeing as many folks have widely differing beliefs on what should or shouldn't be admissible. Many simply say that if a species is on the UKSI list then it must be good to tick. Hmmm, and that's where the trouble starts. 

Let's take birds as an example. There already exists an 'official' British and Irish bird list, but there are a couple of splinter groups who believe the official bird list is flawed and as such they allow various extra taxa to be counted on their own 'unofficial' lists. But who is right, who should listers follow? BUBO have neatly overcome the issue by allowing a user to follow the official list or an unoffical list, and in fact many users have generated lists for all three options. 

But who gets to officiate the pan-species list for Britain and Ireland? Which bodies should be followed, whose lists should be adopted, which taxonomy is the most up to date? The (official) British bird list stands at a little over 630 species. By comparison, the UK Species Inventory list runs into tens of thousands of species. It is huge and it is unwieldly (and constantly in need of revision as new species are found) and I suspect will forever cause frictions and disagreements over what should and shouldn't be on it. 

My own perspective is that the UKSI, for BUBO Listing purposes at least, urgently needs to be cleaned up. And fair play to Andy and Mike, they've already been busily doing just that. But why does it even matter, I hear you ask. Well....

I'm a competitive person and I'm proud of my pan-species list. I've worked hard to understand a bit about the natural world and to see lots of species, a great many of which have been self-found and self-identified. And, in Britain at least, I've seen more species than most other folks have. That alone makes me proud (or maybe the word I'm looking for is smug...)

I've seen American Bullfrog in Britain. I've seen Red-bellied Slider in Britain. I've seen European Pond Turtle in Britain. But none of these are on my British PSL. Why? Because they aren't wild animals, they're just booted out pets that are able to survive outdoors. The fact that they are big and obvious and can live for a number of years means that they are often seen 'in the wild' even though they themselves are not wild animals. They are simply dumped, unwanted pets that haven't died yet, that's all. Yes terrapins have on rare occasions laid a batch of eggs, but none have ever hatched. Yes American Bullfrogs did once breed and produce tadpoles in a stream, but they were quickly (and quite rightly) all exterminated. So, those terrapins that haul up on the island in your local duck pond? Nah mate, they just ain't countable.

The vast majority of BUBO's users are list-keeping birders because, up until a few weeks ago at least, that's precisely who the site was developed to cater for. Some of these birders will have branched out to look at 'other stuff' in the summer; moths, butterflies and dragonflies are examples of insect families that have gained a lot of followers from the birding brigade in recent years. Many of these folk will be competent naturalists, in fact birding may be a secondary interest to some, but many more of them will lack the knowledge to make an educated decision as to which of the multitude of taxa on the 'BUBO Checklist' are genuinely tickable species. Scanning through a few lists it's clear to see that it's becoming a bit of an issue. 

I'm not concerned that my reptile list, for example, is currently being overhauled by a bunch of numpties who don't know what they're on about (gosh no, perish the thought!) but I do believe there is a need for those talented BUBO Boys to 'clean up' the UKSI before things get further out of hand. Sadly, from their point of view, there is no single person expert enough on all taxon groups to offer them the required knowledge and guidance. So they're going to have to shop around, follow various official lists, from a large number of organisations and recording schemes, until the UKSI has been cleaned up to an acceptably realistic level. I wholeheartedly applaud Andy and Mike for undertaking what they both knew would be a huge task, and I very much hope the push backs and arguments don't put them off from continuing to host pan-species lists on BUBO Listing because in the end it will be nothing short of marvellous, I absolutely know it will. 

I've already spent a fair few hours uploading my PSL onto the BUBO pages. I made sure to fill in the dates and places too, so that each species account reads something like a data label. Once I'd completed that, I soon realised my spreadsheets held errors. How on earth could I have recorded a microlep in West Sussex and another in Aberdeenshire on the same day? Why is the Odonata Targets button telling me I still need to see Northern Damselfly when I know I've already seen it at a pool close to Loch Garten? Why doesn't BUBO offer me Small Engrailed and why can't I add Eriocrania chrysolepidella? Lots of small things that I've managed to amend on my spreadsheets, small things which I would probably never have noticed or gotten around to otherwise. 

One of my goals for the coming winter period was to put my entire PSL online, all in one place, completely transparent and accessible to anybody that chose to view it. BUBO Listing has unexpectedly provided me, and many others, with precisely this platform. Thank you Andy and Mike, you are both legends for doing this. 

Images of Smut

The bin lorries can't get to where I live, so I need to walk my rubbish and recycling down to the pier, a walk of maybe 300 metres. The track to the pier passes beneath some mature Beech trees, alongside a low stone wall, past some derelict buildings and ends at the tarmac road by the pier. It's all a bit overgrown and untidy, meaning there's always something different that catches my eye whenever I pass through. 

Today I spent a short while exploring the walls of the derelict buildings, basically just taking pics of the various plant species that have colonised the exposed stonework and cracked render. Some were entirely expected, Maidenhair Spleenwort for example is everywhere up here, as is Fuchsia and Buddleja. But I found a couple of less expected species too. 

A couple of the derelict buildings just upslope from the pier

And here are a selection of the plants I found growing out of the walls

 

Butterfly Bush Buddleja davidii

A young Prickly Sow-thistle Sonchus asper

Common Ragwort Jacobaea vulgaris

Hart's-tongue Fern Asplenium scolopendrium

Maidenhair Fern Asplenium trichomanes is abundant on most old mortared walls up here

Short-fruited Willowherb Epilobium obscurum with another sow-thistle

Fuchsia Fuchsia magellanica is another common species up here

Presumably Red Fescue Festuca rubra. It's an abundant grass here

Wall Lettuce Mycelis muralis. A really good plant on Skye, known only from the Broadford area!

Ribwort Plantain Plantago lanceolata

Wilson's Honeysuckle Lonicera nitida. Not sure I've ever seen this growing out of a wall before!

Common Figwort Scrophularia nodosa. Can't honestly say I expected to find this on a wall

Entire-leaved Cotoneaster Cotoneaster integrifolius which can become a bit of a menace

An Ash Fraxinus excelsior sapling!

Leaving the buildings, I headed back to the house quite happy with the Wall Lettuce and Wilson's Honeysuckle records. On a low wall I spied a large clump of Intermediate Polypody Polypodium interjectum and, more out of habit than expectation, had a quick peer on the underside for signs of Psychoides damage. Well...

Do you see them yet?

I checked a few more fronds and soon found this

Aah, now you see them!

Now that's what I call a pretty heavy Psychoides infestation! I took a frond back to my microscope to confirm which of the two Psychoides species I had found, though the untidy mess (and my previous Skye records) already strongly hinted at the species involved. 

Just so we're all on the same page here, there are two species of micromoths in the genus Psychoides that occur in Britain. They both lay eggs on various species of fern and the newly-hatched larva starts off by mining the leaf tissue before emerging onto the underside of the frond whereupon it uses silk to bind together fragments of the fern's spore-bearing sori into a 'tent', under which it hides as it feeds. One species constructs rather messy 'tents' and the other makes nice neat ones, which it moves around in as it feeds. The two species can be reliably told apart from each other as larvae by checking the colour of the prothoracic plate (which sits immediately behind the head) and anal plate (at the 'tail' end). 

P.filicivora has a pale to mid-brown head capsule, a transparent prothoracic plate (allowing the brown head capsule to be seen through it) and a pale anal plate the same colour as the body segments. 

P.verhuella has a blackish head capsule and prothoracic plate, and the anal plate is also blackish, contrasting with the pale body segments. 

Time to see who we have...

Brown head capsule is readily visible through the covering prothoracic plate, no dark anal plate.

This is Psychoides filicivora, the one with the messy 'tent' and the only one of the two species so far known to occur here on Skye. Here's a handy comparison pic I just nabbed off Wikipedia, of all places

I took lots of pics by pointing my camera down the barrel of my microscope. Quality is a bit hit and miss when using this technique (it is for me, at least) but I was pleased with this short video clip. It shows a larva, which I'd rudely unearthed from below its tent, in the process of putting together a fresh tent. I should probably stop calling it a tent, maybe retreat would be a better word. Anyway, if you view this on a big screen you can just about see the silk being produced from the mouthparts and used to bind loose fragments of sorus together! 

The English name for Psychoides filicivora is Fern Smut. Just in case you were wondering why I used a clickbait-esque post title...