General remarks on recording 



As mentioned earlier, the species listed over the years in the island's Annual Bailiwick 

 Entomological Reports, fall short of supplying an accurate interpretation of their full extent. Authors of these 

 reports mainly tended to list species that came under the headings of new, rare, unusual and migratory. 

 Either through a lack of coordination between island recorders and through the limited access to main 

 Bailiwick databases, many records got overlooked, or at least, the best use had not been made of available 

 recorded material. Often, species were listed as first records for the islands as a whole, or for an individual 

 island, but no published data was provided. This tended to devaluate the records and added nothing of 

 scientific or biological value. The mere mentioning of these species as having been recorded is almost 

 valueless, unless evidence was supplied that voucher material was available for future research, by 

 simultaneously giving their full data. The listing of species without evidence of voucher material amounts to 

 little more than hearsay. 



Many new additions and especially first island records were discovered amidst old accessions, or 

 simply from recent material awaiting identifications. Sometimes these older additions were listed in Annual 

 Reports, but quite often the records went straight to database files and were known only to the recorders 

 within the islands. Therefore information concerning first Channel Islands records, or first individual island 

 records, did not always get entered into the published literature. It is noted that occasionally some records 

 were erroneously claimed as constituting either first records for the Channel Islands as a whole, or first 

 individual island records. These claims were due to a lack of a thorough examination of either the available 

 literature, or of database information. 



For most of the species that could quite reasonably be regarded as common on individual islands, 

 there exists relatively little published information in the form of recorded data. From the published literature, 

 the impression could be obtained that most recorded species are rare, or that they have limited distributions 

 over the islands, which commonly would be far from the truth. Even after bringing together all published 

 records and adding many previously unpublished records from a wide range of sources, for many species it 

 is still difficult to estimate their status. A general conclusion can be assumed that many species are still 

 under-recorded, even in the larger islands, certainly a fact for the smaller islands. 



Whereas in more recent years Guernsey and Jersey received light-trap attention almost the whole 

 year round, the smaller islands of Alderney, Herm and Sark have always only been investigated for limited 

 periods in the summer months and more rarely still in spring and autumn and hardly ever in winter, except a 

 few scattered records by local observers. Meanwhile, for nearly 200 years, Jethou and Brecqhou have 

 received only a few summer visits by recorders. The island of Burhou has never been studied for 

 Lepidoptera. This unequal balance alone suggests where areas of study are lacking. 



Methods of recording data vary enormously over the years between the various writers and 

 compilers of annual lists. These inconsistencies often lead to inaccuracies and can affect every aspect of a 

 record. Uncertainty may exist about which island the record originates from. Records may lack localities 

 within a given island, and full dates plus the name of collector or observer. As already alluded to, the dates 

 on which a record may have been collected, was often confused with the date the record was published. 

 When reference was made to these records, the same errors may be perpetuated in subsequent papers. It must 

 also be mentioned that frequently writers give generalised statements, when preferably closer observations 

 would have conveyed more useful information. 



From the early part of the 19th century up to today, numerous Lepidoptera records have been 

 compiled in the literature, however, the literature does not always convey how many of these are represented 

 by retained voucher specimens. Except occasionally, like the single sighting of Melanargia galathea in 1999 

 on Jersey, it is not always made clear if a record is based on a sighting only, or whether voucher specimens 

 are available for future study. Indications about whether a specimen or specimens were only seen or were 

 retained as voucher material in the record's section of this book have had to be largely a matter of 

 conjecture, for the original published information did not always convey this vital statistic. If a species had 

 only been recorded a few times for the islands as a whole, or for an individual island, the supposition is here 

 made that the record suggested a retained voucher specimen, unless it was otherwise stated. Similarly, when 

 records were frequent, or in consecutive years, it is here assumed that they were based on sightings only. 

 These suppositions of course may not always be correct. It would require detailed examinations of all known 

 collections to correctly learn these facts. Even then, full accuracy may not be possible, due to loss of 

 information when old material may not always carry data labels, and the fact that information may not have 

 been retained on destroyed material due to trauma, mould or insect damage. 



In more recent years only, fairly comprehensive annual lists and data have been compiled but not 

 published, they are privately circulated within the islands and copies can possibly be made available on 

 request. The amount of information and data they contain far exceeds the amount that eventually gets 



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