B & F

This column lists the Bradley and Fletcher number for each species as listed in ‘Checklist of Lepidoptera recorded from the British Isles’ by J D Bradley (1998). This number makes it easy to identify references to species despite changes in their names.

Scientific Name & Vernacular Name

These two columns are largely self-explanatory. The names used are taken from Bradley (1998).

GB Status

This column gives an indication of the species distribution/abundance throughout the country as a whole.

Tetrad Squares

In the previous version of the checklist a Suffolk status was assigned to each species to give a simple indication of the distribution/frequency of the species. Species were largely assigned values of Common, Local or Migrant. Although this categorisation was simple and reasonably easy to apply it has lead to some confusion over the status of some moth species in the county.

After consideration of alternative methods the group  has decided that in place of the Local Status column a Tetrad Squares column specifying how many tetrads the species has been recorded from would be relatively easy to implement accurately and of most use. This will hopefully give recorders some indication of how widespread each species is. There are 1088 tetrads in the county of Suffolk.

SMP Cat

This column contains the Suffolk Moth Panel category number for each species, values ranging from 1 to 4. See the earlier section ‘The Suffolk Moth Panel and Validation of Records’ for more details on this topic. Including this category number within the checklist should hopefully help recorders identify which species the panel would like more information about, including those species for which a voucher specimen is likely to be required.