A system for categorizing the rarity and scarcity of Irish non-marine invertebrates

Tender description

Ireland’s terrestrial and freshwater habitats are home to many thousands of species of insect and invertebrate. Many of these species are obscure and little studied and knowledge of their distribution is poorly known and, perhaps, always will be. However, the distribution and natural history of many groups of insects and invertebrates are relatively well known and objective assessment of their abundance and rarity can be made. Mapping projects for many insect groups have produced atlases many of these covering both Britain and Ireland. These published atlases provide perhaps the most reliable indication of range of species as they are produced from verified data sets from recording schemes. Since 2000, species distribution maps have increasingly been available online through data centres including the National Biodiversity Data Centre (www.maps.biodiversityireland.ie; which only covers Irish species) the UK National Biodiversity Network (www.nbnatlas.org; which often has Irish datasets) and the international Global Biodiversity Information Facility (www.gbif.org). These data sets have the great advantage in being regularly updated and it is possible to interrogate them to explore the data, although it has to be recognised that they may contain a proportion of unverified records. Abundance is less easily determined but informed assessments can be made on the rarity and scarcity of species based on the mapped records and knowledge of the habitat and biological requirements. See RfT document