Essex species data

The Recorders compile and maintain detailed records of Essex flora, fauna and geology (the Watsonian recording vice counties 18 and 19, including the London boroughs east of the River Lea). They welcome records from naturalists and these should include species, date of observation, location and, where possible, a six-figure grid reference and any habitat or other relevant ecological data. They will also assist with identification and answer queries on their subjects but where a reply is necessary please enclose a stamped addressed envelope. The Essex Birdwatching Society  undertake the same role for bird data.

The Essex Field Club datasearch system allows to you obtain specialist species datasearch reports. Reports are provided as downloadable pdf documents with a spreadsheet csv file option and are customised to an area of your choosing.  Please see our Datasearch Terms of Service page for full details. Once you start a request, you can save changes at any time and return to complete this later. We can currently provide access to 5,476,349 records for 15,330 species. (see summary for more details).

In common with the Essex Wildlife Trust, Essex County Council country parks, the RSPB, the BSBI and the Spider Recording Scheme etc, the Club is encouraging the use of the MapMate  biological recording and mapping software. If you are using MapMate for your biological records, then please send these on regular occasions using the MapMate synchronisation process. Excellent help on using MapMate has been provided by Martin Harvey and BSBI at http://mapmate.bsbi.org.uk/ . This provides training videos, and covers a variety of topics including setting up MapMate, data entry, analysis, syncing and mapping. Martin also has an excellent website providing resources and guidance at http://sites.google.com/site/kitenetter/Home/mapmate .

The data used to generate the 'on-the-fly' distribution maps on this website are currently made up of records provided by County Recorders using MapMate to co-ordinate and record the county data, mostly for their taxonomic groups. In some cases only part county data are available, and this is noted in the 'find more species' taxonomic group dropdown box on the species search page. Data are uploaded at regular intervals for most groups included. It is hoped to add more data as they become available in suitable form.

A summary of species records available here is provided by the Database Summary for species by year page and logged on users can see a summary of these data by taxonomic group at the Database Summary for species page. An example of an Essex distribution map for a widespread spider, the 'Nursery Web Spider' Pisaura mirabilis is below, followed by an example of a national map with results from our Lily Beetle survey.

Coverage for different taxonomic groups can be seen at the Species Group Coverage page.

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