Social media and invertebrate recording

What technology has done for invertebrate recording is difficult to appreciate. Whilst it has undoubtedly created greater awareness and interest in our invertebrate fauna, the downside seems to be an increased tendency to ask the identity of something, without even attempting to identify it yourself.

But some invertebrate Orders have benefitted enormously from the greater exposure via the internet and social media. Once considerably neglected and much under-recorded, there has been a dramatic increase in interest shown towards Centipedes, Millipedes, Woodlice, False Scorpions and Harvestmen.

Most Orders have seen a number of species found new to the UK and even the UK's False Scorpion list has just been added to. Its an ever-changing and exciting aspect to recording, but at the same time, it can be a nightmare for those with websites to maintain and update!

Harvestmen (Opiliones) have done well for new arrivals in the past ten or so years, with a number of new species turning up. While many of these new species have originated from southern counties, those of us living in the northern-half of the UK have by no means been left out and with worldwide plant importation to your local garden centre, there's every chance of finding something new to the UK in any part of the UK.

Three recent Harvestmen with 'northern roots' include the still un-named Leiobunum sp.A (Schönhofer & Hillen 2008, Toss 2009, Wijnhoven et al. 2007) from Worksop, Nottinghamshire in 2009, Leiobunum limbatum (L.Koch, 1861) from Colne, Lancashire in 2019 and Platybunus pinetorum (C.L.Koch, 1839) from a garden in Sheffield, Yorkshire in 2010.

Background history of Platybunus pinetorum in the UK

Fortunately, the Sheffield garden in which Platybunus pinetorum was found belonged to Paul Richards, who himself has done much to promote and actively encourage the recording of UK Harvestmen over the past number of years. It was Paul who eventually found the second UK site for Leiobunum sp.A in Barnsley, after Dilys and I had found the UK's first in a small Worksop garden in 2009.

For a number of years, Platybunus pinetorum was recorded by Paul (continuing to this day) and then other records began to turn up elsewhere, including locally in Sheffield. Over the next few years, records came from Glasgow and Aberdeen in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in the UK at Yorkshire, Northampton and a number of other towns. Unfortunately, most of these records have so far failed to find their way on to the NBN Atlas.

So after a number of years promoting Nottinghamshire's Harvestmen on this website and then following the excitement of finding a species new to both the UK and Nottinghamshire, Dilys and I were always on the look out for others and Platybunus pinetorum was probably at the top of our list, although we always suspected that the hard to find (and small) Anelasmocephalus cambridgei (Westwood, 1874) lurked in a local woodland somewhere.

Many of the Platybunus pinetorum records appeared to come from urban locations, so it was along any wall or fence that casual searches were made whenever the opportunity came along. Like the similar Platybunus triangularis, P. pinetorum is one of few Harvestmen to be found as adults during the Spring. P. triangularis is a common species of woodlands and other well vegetated sites, but it has proved to be common at a range of sites and we have recorded it from urban gardens around Nottingham. On the whole, we have found it to be widespread throughout Nottinghamshire, though with few records from sites east of the Trent Valley, which is (without doubt) entirely down to recorder effort.