Securing Biodiversity in Breckland - European Commission

and processes. Requirements for broad habitat classes, microhabitats or structures and ecologicalprocesses were each assessed on a scale where:• +3 – an essential condition or process, or a primary habitat• +2 – an important condition, process or habitat• +1 – of minor benefit or importance• 0 – known to have no effect• -1 – minor detrimental effect• -2 – major detrimental effect• -3 – having a destructive or damaging effect• -? – may have a negative effect• +? – may have a positive effect• n/a – not relevant• Blank cells – no informationSources of Ecological InformationThe BBA team compiled habitat, structure and process information for all Breckland conservationpriority species from a wide range of published and documentary sources (Table 11). Twelvespecies and taxonomic experts were able to give considerable time to fully compile and classifyhabitat, structure and process understanding for all Breckland conservation priority species withintheir taxonomic areas of expertise. This autecological information was subsequently validated byexperts in a range of taxonomic groups.The largest source of readily available ecological information was the species accounts storedwithin Recorder 6. This information includes species accounts originally developed within theInvertebrate Site Register, various Red Data Book accounts and checklists and reviews of taxonomicgroups (Table 11) These Recorder 6 accounts generally provided a good basis for understanding theautecological requirements of most species. In addition, a large number of other sources ofinformation were obtained, including species accounts in atlases, taxonomic reviews and specialistjournal publications (Table 11). These were all used to complete the habitat and process matrix forrespective taxonomic groups. However, no information was obtained for approximately 5% ofBreckland conservation priority species, many of which were Diptera species represented by only ahandful of national records, with little or no ecological understanding yet available.The completed habitat matrix was used to assess the relative importance for priority species ofeach of the broad habitats, with sand, chalk and gravel pits combined, plus the micro-habitats dung,mammal burrows, carrion, detritus/leaf litter and deadwood. All habitat associations of +2 and +3were selected for priority species. The total number of Breckland conservation priority species, thenumber of BAP designated species, the number species unique to a single habitat, the number ofBreckland specialist species and the number of those that have a mainly coastal distribution werecalculated for each habitat.64