Annual estimates of occupancy for bryophytes, lichens and invertebrates in the UK, 1970\u20132015

Charlotte L Outhwaite,Roger Morris,Richard E Chandler,Adrian Fowles,Björn C Beckmann,Paul Lee,Richard Fox,Stephen C F Palmer ,John M Kramer ,Tony Barber,Mark G Telfer ,Peter G Sutton ,Dave Hubble,Ian J Wallace ,Adrian Norris,David Hepper,David B Roy,Helen E Roy,Oliver L Pescott,Jim Flanagan,P C Hammond ,Alan Stubbs,T Les Cook ,Janet Simkin,Peter Harvey,Craig R Macadam ,Martin Harvey,T Bantock ,Keith N A Alexander ,Gary D Powney,Tom August ,Stuart G Ball ,Stephanie L Rorke ,Colin W Plant ,Nick J B Isaac

doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0269-1

Abstract

Here, we determine annual estimates of occupancy and species trends for 5,293 UK bryophytes, lichens, and invertebrates, providing national scale information on UK biodiversity change for 31 taxonomic groups for the time period 1970 to 2015. The dataset was produced through the application of a Bayesian occupancy modelling framework to species occurrence records supplied by 29 national recording schemes or societies (n = 24,118,549 records). In the UK, annual measures of species status from fine scale data (e.g. 1 × 1 km) had previously been limited to a few taxa for which structured monitoring data are available, mainly birds, butterflies, bats and a subset of moth species. By using an occupancy modelling framework designed for use with relatively low recording intensity data, we have been able to estimate species trends and generate annual estimates of occupancy for taxa where annual trend estimates and status were previously limited or unknown at this scale. These data broaden our knowledge of UK biodiversity and can be used to investigate variation in and drivers of biodiversity change.

Highlights

Background & SummaryKnowledge on the status and trends of biodiversity is essential for the conservation of threatened species and for the monitoring of progress towards biodiversity targets[1]
Species occurrence records are fine-grained data available for many taxa and offer an alternative data source that can be used for estimating annual measures of biodiversity change
One technique that has been increasingly used for the analysis of occurrence records is occupancy modelling[7,16,17,18,19]

Summary

Background & Summary

Knowledge on the status and trends of biodiversity is essential for the conservation of threatened species and for the monitoring of progress towards biodiversity targets[1]. When compared with other methods developed for the estimation of trends from occurrence records, occupancy models have been shown to be the most capable of addressing associated biases, if the detection process is appropriately specified[21] Their use has been limited to taxa that have a high recording intensity including birds[22], dragonflies[5,19] and butterflies[17,23]. Through the application of a modelling framework based on that of Outhwaite et al.[24] we have produced a 45-year dataset of annual occupancy estimates for 5,293 UK bryophyte, lichen and invertebrate species This dataset presents a long-term measure of change in species occupancy at a national (UK and GB) and nation-specific scale (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) using fine grained (1 × 1km) data. It is hoped that these data will provide the basis of future aggregate measures of UK biodiversity change and enable the investigation of drivers of change

Methods

Code availability