How we read the records

This site is built on occurrence records — dated, located observations of a species. That is a different thing from a range map, and the difference matters.

Where the data comes from

Every count here derives from GBIF, which pools records from museums, national surveys and citizen-science projects such as eBird and iNaturalist. A record says "someone identified this species at this place on this date". It does not say the animal breeds there, is common there, or is still there.

What we exclude

We drop fossil specimens and records of living captive animals, because a fossil or a zoo enclosure is not evidence that a free-living animal was recorded there. We keep only records with coordinates.

How the record pattern is described

Each animal gets a descriptive record-pattern label, not a formal status:

• repeated records across many years and spread through the year.
• repeated records repeated but concentrated in part of the year.
• one-off one-off or limited records in the covered source.
• historical historical records with no recent record in the covered source.

The biases you should assume

Recording effort is wildly uneven. Birds dominate because birdwatchers submit vast numbers of checklists; insects and marine life are under-recorded nearly everywhere. Rich, well-surveyed countries look biodiverse partly because they are well surveyed. A high count means "well recorded", not "abundant".

Credits

Occurrence aggregates: CC0 records accessed through GBIF.org. Taxonomy: GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, CC BY 4.0. Photographs: supported open-licence files from Wikimedia Commons, each credited with its source and licence on the page where it appears. See data sources & licences. Our data policy explains the publication gate and why this site does not publish exact observation coordinates.

Environment context

The separate environment module uses approved Environment Agency importer snapshots for England. Those infrastructure records are never presented as evidence that an animal was recorded at a station or waterbody.