Incorrect data entry using the GBNNSIP form

Submitted by James Emerson on

This is down to human error, but it seems to have happened a lot so probably does need looking at.

One of my primary areas of interest is psyllids. I happened to notice there were 43 records of Japanese Knotweed Pysllid, Aphalara itadori, showing up when I sorted using the columns at the top of the records, which I thought was odd (its a rarely persisting biocontrol introduction). Having looked at these records, I think they all refer to Japanese Knotweed, as photos and text clearly refer to plants in all of the ones I checked. All of these records had been inputted by non-signed in users via the non-native species portal (https://irecord.org.uk/enter-non-native-records). As I suspected, when I started typing in "Japanese" the psyllid comes up before the plant. It appears that people unfamiliar with iRecord (and what a psyllid is!) select the first option that pops up. As a result these knotweed records are not available to conservation teams, and the rare psyllid seems to be widely distributed.

 

I'm not sure how best to deal with this - could the GBNNSIP form species options just be limited to the species listed on their website here: https://www.nonnativespecies.org/non-native-species/recording?

Comments

Submitted by o_pescotto on Thu, 28/08/2025 - 09:39

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Thanks James, we have forwarded this to the relevant people internally. -- iRecord