Checklists of fauna and designations of species status

Abstract

Introduction. Establishing the statuses of species and compiling checklists of species is an urgent
issue of modern faunistics, and description and monitoring of biodiversity. Checklists are a form of
compact presentation of information about the composition of the fauna allowing to catalogue the
collected field and collection material systematically and with the use of categories of significance and to
effectively carry out its further analysis.
The aim of the research is to analyse the practices of compiling indexed checklists, updating such
data into a single system, and proposals for maintaining control checklists indexed by the statuses of
presence, abundance, rarity, etc.
Materials and methods. The issue of compiling indexed or control checklists of fauna, checklists
that are supplemented with additional information about the status of the species, is considered in detail.
Such statuses can be categories of presence, abundance, conservation, economic importance, etc. Among
other issues, two main groups that are important during the description of wild fauna under natural
conditions are considered: statuses of presence and abundance.
Results. The following presence statuses were established: "endemic", "rare", "extinct",
"common", and "alien". Detailed statuses of presence ("migrant", "transitive", "hibernating", "probably
extinct", etc.) and categories of rarity, in particular vulnerability, of species necessary for indicating
protection needs are considered. The authors consider such letter designations to be the most convenient
for conversion into a point scale. Abundance categories ("commonness") are presented as a system of
verbal categories and point evaluations, including 3 to 6 gradations, of which three are basic (rare,
common, abundant) and two are additional (occasional, highly abundant). Point scores correspond to a
specific, measurable level of abundance and are presented on a logarithmic scale. Examples of the use of
combined indexing systems of such lists are also considered. Combined versions of indexed checklists can
become the object of comparisons of the population sizes of different habitats or communities, etc., since
different biotopes can differ both by the presence of species and in their relative abundance and set of
dominant species. The general experience of arranging indexed checklists makes it possible to optimise
the designation of species in regional faunal lists. Numerical designations are best combined with levels of
their abundance, and statuses are best indicated by letter codes.
Conclusions. The analysis of the indexed fauna lists shows that the system of brief symbolic
designations of statuses can be used for a compact perception of information about the specifics of the
species, and the narrowing of the research tasks makes it possible to minimise the number of code
designations.