1 Online resources supporting species identification

Identifying a species is a challenging but exciting process. You’ve seen in previous weeks that there are lots of different ways of reaching a species identification, each with their strength and weaknesses. For some species, identification is very straightforward – if you’re in the UK and you see a mammal with a black and white striped face, about the size of a medium dog, you can probably very quickly confirm that it’s a badger. However, other species require much closer examination, possibly using a microscope or even DNA techniques to confirm you have correctly identified it.

However, once you know what a species is, whether it’s a bird, tree or fungus, you will no doubt want to know more about it. Particularly if it’s a species that you are not familiar with, you will naturally have lots of questions about it that you will want answering. Luckily, there is a wealth of information available on the internet. In the second part of this week we will be covering how to navigate this information and make judgements about its source and reliability.