InvertebrateIreland Online
Checklists of plants and animals are essential tools for biological collections in museums and are the foundations for inventories of biodiversity and conservation research. They have traditionally been produced as simple printed lists, without supporting information. Changes in taxonomy and nomenclature and the addition of species to a region, can quickly render a checklist out of date.
What we plan to include here is the most current version of the Irish checklist. We also aim to provide information that supports and explains why the species is called what it is, why it is on the Irish list (or why it has been deleted), what it was called before. This is information which is often not included in checklists and only available to specialist researchers.
This information is being gathered and stored in our databases and displayed on our webpages. The information will be added continually as it becomes available. However, the checklists themselves will only be updated once a year. All the checklists are authored by experts in the Irish fauna and refereed by a panel comprising Robert Nash and James O’Connor who are the overall editors.