SQI calculation AND Conservation Statuses!

[AdrianPKnowles]

I am looking at a "tree-associated" Biotope list of 54 species. Pantheon says that four of these have a Conservation Status (three Nationally Scarce and one RDB3). The SQI calculation for this data set is therefore (50+4+4+4+8)/54*100, which equals 129.6.

However, the Pantheon Biotope table returns an SQI of only 117 for this dataset.

I think I know why!! The RDB3 species listed is for "Pemphredon lethifera" (ought to be lethifer), which is common, but has been synonymised with P. enslini which was RDB3. Pemphredon lethifer should not have a conservation status and therefore scores 1 in the SQI calculation. The SQI calculation is therefore (51+4+4+4)/54*100, which comes to 116.66 or (rounded up) 117.

Thus, it looks like the SQI calculator is looking at a different (but correct) list of Conservation Statuses than that used to generate the Conservation Status list in the analysis table?!

[Davydaveth]

There are several versions of SQI which are based on allocating scores on a geometric scale from 1, for the most widespread species, to 16, 32 or 64, for the most localised, depending on theauthor. The scores are summed to give a total (the Species Quality Score, SQS) that is clearly dependent on sampling effort but may be used to compare sites where the sampling effort was similar. Taking the average of this score (SQI = SQS ÷ total number of species) largely corrects for sampling effort. The index takes all species into account so that widespread species contribute to the assessment. It appears to have originated from the WETSCORE (WETland SiteCOleoptera Record Evaluation) method, developed for water beetles using data collected for the national recording scheme (Foster, 1987; Foster et al. 1990; Foster & Eyre, 1992). Natural England Research Report NERR005, Surveying terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates for conservation evaluation, 2007.

[johnvanbreda]

I think the problem Adrian refers to is actually an issue in UKSI (where we derive our conservation statuses from). See http://nbn-sd-dev.nhm.ac.uk/taxon.php?linkKey=NBNSYS0100004529 - you can see that the given accepted name is P. lethifera but this is a mispelling (see http://www.bwars.com/wasp/crabronidae/inae/pemphredon-lethifer). UKSI does indeed synonymise P. enslini with P. lethifer(a) and does indeed provide conservation statuses for P. enslini which, by inference, end up attached to P. lethifer(a). The SQS scores given in the Pantheon dataset are not subject to the same error, hence the difference in scores from your calculation based on the statuses.

So, the proposed change required in UKSI is: 1) Separate P. enslini into it's own concept. 2) Make P. lethifer an accepted name and lethifera a synonym. Subject to confirmation by someone more knowledgeable than I though of course! I'll point Chris Raper to this issue via an email.

[johnvanbreda]

Response from Chris Raper:

I've done the obvious change of adding "lethifer" as the recommended name (not "letifera") but I think the issue with scoring is going to need changes to the JNCC designatory checklist. Currently they have RDB3 status attached to the name "Pemphredon (Cemonus) austriaca (Kohl, 1888) auct. Brit." which is synonymised under lethifer because this species have an austriaca misident synonym. But the genuine austriaca does exist too and I suspect that this is the name they should be associating with that RDB3 status.    @Davydaveth : have you a preference for how it is handled? I can have a chat with Graham French to find out exactly which statutory checklist this comes from. 

[Davydaveth]

We had a bit of a discussion about this recently and i was/ am of the view that since the Hymenoptera review is due out soon, it may be best to wait until they resolve what is what, and how rare/threatened the parts of this group are. Those conservation status values can then be fed to JNCC so that Pantheon then is up to date with the current view on things. The review sort of forces the community hand on this and similar issues.