In praise of iRecord

 This morning I received some good news. An email notification from irecord.org.uk pinged into my inbox. A species of Leafhopper I had photographed had been identified as Acericerus ribauti. 

I have subscribed to irecord.org.uk for several years, and I have to say it is brilliant. If you have an enquiring mind, as most natural history buffs surely do, this splendid website combined with your photograph of whatever beastie you have captured will get you to an answer. It is a two way process. It confirms (or corrects) your identification and at the same time gets it to the relevant recorder.

Let's take Acericerus ribauti as an example. I caught it in my moth trap on March 17/18, but only spotted it when it was crawling across the ceiling of our utility room. It seemed pretty docile and allowed me to take a series of photos before it flew off.

It was tiny

But viewed through the close-up lens of my bridge camera it is transformed

I knew it was a leafhopper, and that a leafhopper was part of the Bugs and their allies family of insects, but that was about it. I tried the obsidentify app on my phone and that came up with Acericerus sp, and even gave a 57% likelihood of A ribauti. I checked my insect book which showed Maple Leafhopper Acericerus vittifrons but not A ribauti. The Bug-life website helped further, suggesting that ribauti and vittifrons could best be distinguished by a mark on the front of its face. I didn't have a photo of that, and I got the impression that ribauti weren't that common, so I decided to submit it to irecord.org.uk as Acericerus sp.

Enter the expert. The way irecord.org.uk works is that all records are validated by an expert. In this case Alan Stewart, who left me the comment that "the clear apical third of the wings and the marbled pronotum point towards it being Acericerus ribauti." 

I went onto the National Biodiversity Network Atlas site and found just 16 records of A ribauti for the UK, including three in Worcestershire and none at all in Warwickshire.

How exciting is that !