Blogs

A new guest blog from Ben Deed, manager of Merseyside BioBank - the Local Environmental Record Centre for Merseyside - on gamification and citizen science. The concept of gamification has been around for a while. It is in essence making something enjoyable and 'game-like'. The reason for gamifying an activity could be to increase uptake or extend the use of a service or product by increasing interest, loyalty, enjoyment or otherwise affecting the behaviour or a user. With such a great potential for influencing the behaviour of people and their responses it is perhaps little wonder that gamification has been widely used, though often un-noticed, throughout our society. Gamification will generally include the implementation of a simplegame mechanics such as a straight forward reward based system using simple rules.

As we've all had cause to observe lately, a week is a long time in politics. But not, it turns out, when learning about solitary bees...

Earlier this year I wrote about an exciting new project called BioLinks that the FSC is currently developing and hoping to bring to the West Midlands and the South East in 2017. I am currently part way through a series of workshops across the two proposed project areas, where I am consulting with biological recorders and sector professionals in order to determine how the project should be planned and what we should focus on. The consultations are providing amazing feedback and, as a result, I’ve organised extra dates and locations.

Do you know an outstanding biological recorder or group? Why not nominate them for a UK Award? In their second year, these national awards have been set up by the National Biodiversity Network in partnership with the Biological Records Centre and the National Forum for Biological Recording and are generously sponsored by Swarovski Optik UK. They seek to recognise significant achievement and to celebrate success in biological recording.

Museum collections are an invaluable tool for taxonomists and biological recorders alike. As well as being invaluable, they are often under-valued and under-used. We should cherish and value our museum collections - and their curators - especially when so many of them are under increasing pressure.

The British Dragonfly Society is excited to share with you the opportunity to get involved in the hunt for the elusive Common Club-tail Dragonfly!

My name is Keiron Brown and I recently joined the Field Studies Council Biodiversity team. I would like to let you know about a project we are planning called BioLinks. BioLinks is an exciting new Heritage Lottery Fund biological recording project that the FSC is hoping to bring to the South East and West Midlands regions of England from 2017 for five years. Read more...

The idea of the grasses key was to take one step back and create a ‘top-down’ approach, where users learn what defines each genus before jumping to species-level. For me, this approach breaks down the whole identification process, makes it feel more manageable and builds my understanding of taxonomy.

Returning to moth recording after a gap of too many years to count, I took a fancy to build a cheap, lightweight moth trap to use at a favourite nearby locality, Rutland Water. Reducing the cost to a minimum soon became an expensive additional aspect to my hobby.