James McCulloch (National Springtail Recorder) discusses the constantly increasing species list for UK Collembola.
Springtails – small invertebrates closely related to insects – are everywhere: in the soil, up trees, in rockpools, and even being blown around thousands of feet up in the air. They can reach densities of thousands per cubic metre of substrate, yet we know disproportionately little about them. We have a poor grasp on even the most basic level of information: which, and how many, species we have in the UK. James will put forward the case that we may be underestimating the diversity of springtails we have in the UK, and explain how we can resolve this using various sources of data, from citizen science to whole genome sequences. He will also delve into how getting a firm grasp of springtail diversity, as well as understanding how this diversity has come to be, has implications for evolutionary biology, ecology, invasion biology, and conservation.
James McCulloch is the National Recorder for springtails (Collembola), and a PhD student in the evolutionary genomics of springtails at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge.
For more information and to book your place visit The Biological Recording Company Eventbrite page.