North West Invertebrates is the website of ‘The Tanyptera Project’, a long term initiative that started in 2017, funded by the Tanyptera Trust to promote the study and conservation of insects and other invertebrates in the Lancashire and Cheshire region of NW England. The trust funds two full-time posts employed and hosted by National Museums Liverpool:
Tanyptera atrata
By Nigel Jones
Licence: by-nc-nd-2.0
Gary Hedges (Tanyptera Regional Entomologist) – gary.hedges@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
Leanna Dixon (Tanyptera Assistant Entomologist) – leanna.dixon@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
The purpose of this website is to act as a regional hub for invertebrate studies in the region and encourage further involvement and study, especially targeting the voluntary biological recording sector, thus contributing towards our project aims:
Aims of the Tanyptera Project:
- Inform and inspire future entomology and wildlife conservation in the region
- Raise the profile of invertebrates with the wider public
- Improve understanding of the status and distribution of the region’s rare and threatened invertebrate species and assemblages, and to inform conservation management for these
- Improve the quality of invertebrate recording
- Improve the skills of invertebrate recorders
- Improve access to data about invertebrates, their distribution, ecology and conservation
- Identify regionally important species and assemblages
In case you’re wondering, ‘Tanyptera’ comes from a genus of deadwood specialist craneflies, of which we have two representative species in the UK, T. atrata (image above) and T. nigricornis. Neither species are common in our region or the UK as a whole, although T. atrata appears to be more widespread and frequent. Many of the T. nigricornis records are centred around Lancashire and Yorkshire and it is included as a priority species in our Small Grant Scheme to encourage recorders to improve our understanding of it’s NW distribution.
