Hymenoptera Records up to April 2010

Quality Control

The data has been scrutinised by an experienced member of the Sorby Natural History Society, Sheffield as part of a validation process. This has resulted in the correction of obvious input errors (after reference to the primary data source) and highlighted where records required additional information in order to have a high confidence in their accuracy.
Any records with a low level of confidence remaining after validation procedures have been excluded. It is expected that following additional validation checks some of the excluded records will be incorporated in future updates of this dataset.
Given the validation procedures and cautionary approach which has been adopted it is considered that there is a reasonable level of confidence in the accuracy of the dataset but the above comments regarding the precision of the records should be particularly borne in mind when using this dataset.

Method steps

1. Records forming the dataset have mainly been made by local naturalists who specialise in recording Hymenoptera. These records represent approximately 85% of the dataset. The remainder have arisen from a variety of different sources. The actual methods employed to capture the data is varied and for many of the records unknown. The dataset has been scrutinised by an experienced recorder of Hymenoptera as part of a validation process.