יומן של UK Hoverflies (Syrphidae)

Hi all,

With the Euros about to start I did wonder about taking a continental excursion...

Now I don't wish to detract from the good work we are doing with UK hoverflies, but it did occur to me that I'm likely to end up watching a goodly number of matches without necessarily being engrossed by them... and my laptop will be handy. I think I might set about doing some annotating in the countries that are playing - perhaps swapping at half time!

Anyway, feel free to join me. As you can see below, most of Europe is still at the levels of annotation that the UK was before this project got underway. In fact, after the success of November's annotatathon and our subsequent activities, more than half of European hoverflies with life stage annotations are now in the UK! (and just under half of those with sex annotations). There aren't really any additional confusing things for annotations in the rest of Europe compared to the UK, and it's a great opportunity to learn if you are new to this.

Adding annotations is a great way for beginners to see the diversity of hoverflies. It's fairly simple, you can even avoid the few tricky genera completely by sticking to the subfamily Syrphinae. Here's how to do it. (Of course you don't need to be watching the football!).

You can use the links from the Useful URLs post, but just change the country.

Here are the participants in the Euros, showing first the percentage of hoverflies with annotations, and secondly the absolute numbers of annotations compared to the total number of hoverfly observations in each country (in green):

Updated 26-Jun-2024

Hello all,

The first round of group games is over, and it's been quite fun seeing familiar names pop up on observations all over Europe when people are obviously watching the same games! Given that this activity is not core to our purpose as a project - which is for the UK , I don't want to create lots of posts about it (although it gives us all a chance to practice adding annotations - which is a core activity), so I'll just update this post again after each round of group games, the round of 16, and the end of the tournament.

Remember - you don't have to watch the football to join in!

End of first round of group games:

We've added life stage annotations to more than 6% of all non-UK European hoverflies! and sex annotations to 2%, Very cool! (I think it's fair to assume that the jumps are down almost entirely to us!) In particular some of the smaller countries have been greatly affected. I think the biggest total number of annotations added has been to Denmark, while the biggest proportional changes have gone to Serbia (Obviously some of us were watching the England-Serbia match!) You can see the difference in the darker coloured parts of the bars.

End of second round of group games:

Well over 50,000 sex and life stage annotations have been added to European observations since the start of the Euros. I can't say how many are due to us, but it is an increase of 18.5% compared to the number of annotations pre-tournament. And that's for the whole of Europe not just participating countries. Wow. (Participating countries account for 87% of European observations)

4% of all non-UK European hoverflies have received a sex annotation, and 13% have received a life stage annotation.

It may be a little more challenging to choose which country to annotate in this third round of games since matches are being played simultaneously. It looks like Austria, the Netherlands and Poland could particularly do with a little bit of love. Hosts Germany got the biggest numerical increase this time round with nearly 5000 annotations added. Switzerland, France and Belgium also saw nearly or more than 3000. Proportionally, Georgia and Romania did well.

(Note that I've collected these data at the end of each day for the teams that played that day)

End of Group Stage

Since more teams have been playing each day, fewer days in total, and with matches being played simultaneously, it's not surprising that fewer annotations (13500) have been added in the last round of group games. Nevertheless Germany still racked up an impressive 5800+ annotations added. Proportionally, Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia did the best. Countries needing the most annotations are still Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Poland are now out of the tournament - though don't let that stop you if you fancy that challenge (I will continue to update all countries). I think I'll update at the end of the round of 16 as well as the end of the tournament.

During the group stage, 7% of non-UK European hoverflies have received a sex annotation, and 15% a life stage annotation.