For over two and a half centuries field naturalists have been making accurate recordings of their findings. These records have provided an invaluable source of information on the status and distrubution of our flora and fauna over this peorid.
Many Naturalists dream of making an important discovery which is of scientific importance, but which also brings recognition of their efforts. The golden age of recording was unquestionably the late Victorian Era. At the time naturalists were true pioneers and in those days of biological recording it was reletivly easy for a recorder to make a discovery and get their name in print.
Many of our Victorian predacessors engaged in the challaging yet rewarding study of invertabrates. Unlike the better studied taxa like Birds, it was reletivly easy to search for and discover new species for the county or even the country. The discoveries of fortunite few even proved to be new to science!
Our very recent example is the case of the White Prominent moth. The beauitful and distinctave moth was a real mystery having only been seen in Britian or Ireland on a few occations by a handful of dedicated lepidopterists. For many years it had been sought at its former haunts in Kerry and Staffordshire without success and was considerd extinct in Britian and Ireland. Yet after a gap of seventy years, in June 2008 the moth was rediscovered in County Kerry by Dave Allen and on National Moth Night too!
There is still much to learn about the flora and fauna of Northern Ireland too. Great gaps exist in our knowladge of even where some of our commonest species are found. Many species have not been seen for over a centuary, but they may not have been looked for. Some invertabrites in particular remain pooly studied including spiders and harvestman, Caddis flies, Springtails, Micro-MOths and even true flies. To help put this in perspective, those interested in the reletivly well studied familes such as the beetles and Macro-Moths still turn up new species new to Northern Ireland virtually every year
One good thing is that the White Prominent moth has been seen again. Good read. There was even an image of the moth by Dave Allen. I have started a short while ago my own database that has every moth and butterfly ever recorded in UK on it. I am using it to store my records and will share them at the end of the year, so that people can know about all the species I have seen in Northern Ireland and I have even managed to do things like creat reports to show how many of a certian species was recorded on all years or certian years etc.The most important thing is to ensure the data is properly recorded and forwarded to the Enviromental Data and Recording (CEDaR). We should perhaps learn from our Victorian Predacessors in that it remains important to publish our findings, otherwise no-one will ever know of our success or failures! In the face of increasing deveolpment pressure and diminishing habitats, every biological record is precious. After all we cannot hope to protect our biodiversity if we don't know where it is!
The "Need some wallpaper Stripped?" part on the left of the article is about the yellow slugs found in Ireland and how it was first found in Ireland, but then Liverpool and then across Britian and even into western Europe. And yes, they will eat wallpaper among other things (its cellulose they go for)