Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species: some thoughts

This week the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species was launched. Here’s the blurb from the website:

GRIIS, hosted by ISPRA, has been developed with co-funding from the European Union through the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity within the framework of the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASIPartnership). The GIASIPartnership has come together in order to assist Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and others, implement Article 8(h) and Target 9 of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets – “By 2020, invasive alien species and pathways are identified and prioritized, priority species are controlled or eradicated, and measures are in place to manage pathways to prevent their introduction and establishment

The Guardian coverage ran with the subhead “New catalogue expected to stand alongside red list as an international means to fight extinction, by helping to stop biological invasions”.

Invasive and introduced species are one of the key threats to ecosystems, agriculture and aquaculture. Accidentally and deliberately introduced ‘alien’ species can have a huge effect on the places they are introduced into and they are extremely poorly monitored. We don’t so much know when they appear, we just notice when they are there or when they’ve become established. Invasive species can compete with natives, affect trophic systems, bring diseases and pathogens with them which can run riot in invaded ecosystems and if this wasn’t bad enough for nature there are a whole host of human impacts (which means we should care). The need for GRIIS is a burning one. There’s just one problem. GRIIS is currently not very good. Not very good at all.

How many cephalopod species are there in the UK?

Museum visitors ask some of the most innocent yet challenging (and also some important) questions . Why do animals have tails? How do you know it is dead? Is it real? Does it fart? Some of these questions, have a difficult and convoluted answer and other questions like “which animals fart?” can never be comprehensively answered even with an army of fart recorders sent out to the oceans, deserts, forests and cities of the world. As a general rule, and if some clever sod hasn’t already coined it, let’s call it the Carnall Rule, the simpler the question about biology, the more difficult it is to answer. I’d also add the qualifier, the more difficult it is to answer in a way that’s understood by most people.

I love thinking about some of these questions and I love asking them too. These big questions cause us to take a step back, do a bit of research and more often than not, question the question. So with this questioning spirit in mind let’s try to answer the simple question (ut oh): How many cephalopod species are there in the UK?