Hello Everybody,
I would like to explain my thoughts and reasons why I decided to count the way I did. Some of you may have heard this during the meeting in Hamburg to a certain extent but I want to point it out here more clearly:
The background of this census-overview I produced and you all can access through the dropbox-link abve was to have raw numbers to get a reasonable idea of the success of the PP. As you might know, I am writing an A-Grade paper on the PP, its origin and especially its success. I want to show wether the PP is able to survive and grow until its goals are reached and what these goals are or should be.
When I came across the census I was pleased to have such data because the census is actually the only source we have on the active member developpment and developpments in stock. I soon realized the biggest problems of the census:
1. There is no easily readable overview on the “over-the-years-developpment”, one would have to open some 10 .pdf-files for a overview.
2. The only comments on the census results can be found in a second .pdf in which whoever collects the data gives a comparision of the presently reported stock as opposed to the last reported stock. There is no long-term survey. It is not possible because of problem 1.
I wanted to make the whole of this eccellent data-set more accessible for the “simple member”. Noone wants to spend hours looking for the developpment of one single species.
Then, at the Hambnurg-meeting, we came across the strange eveloppment in P. cf. filamentosus spec. “Ampah”. In this specific case, some dozens of paors had been imported 2013. These then have been spread to several members of the PP. In april 2013, some 16 pairs had been reported. As we can see in my graph, this number has gone down over the years with a constant speed, but noone reacted to that devloppment, probably because noone saw it. This finally led to a minimum of only 1 reported pair in fall 2014. Everyone at the meeting asked themselves how this could happen. We had a good stock and now it has gone. This is something we can see in further species too for example with P. cf. nagyi “Cherating” or P. tweediei “Pekan Nenas”. In both species we had a relatively safe stock some years ago and now they have gotten close to vanish or we have lost high percentages of the origina stock.
This has to be stopped and by the use of my table, we now have a possibility to track such developpments and react to them. I suggested some kind of a prewarning system. If we find significant decrease in a certain species, we should write to the people who still have a few pairs so that they should focus on these rare species more in the future time so that we can keep them in stock. I am not quite sure what number of pairs we should define as the lower minimum from when on this prewarning system should start. I would suggest a minmum of 7 pairs. If you agree with me in that point, I could overtake the part of announcing these “endangered stocks” on the forum as I will carry on with the table anyways.
And there we go: The reason why I count pairs instead of single animals should now be obvious. Any single animal is not able to reproduce neither is a unisex group. But if we see some species that is in high danger of disappearing, such unisex stocks might be brought together to increase the number of breeding pairs.
I like to think of my table as some kind of population evaluation. As some of you with a biologist background might know, populations in nature are counted and calculated through different factors and one of these is the sex ratio. A population is only as big as its breeding potential is and this is highly influenced by the sex ratio.
I suggest that we look at the two different data-collection-ways like that. The census is important to find such unequal sex ratio and track every single animal. This should also make sure that unequalities can be reacted on through regular anlimal exchange. My table on the other hand is to clarify and track the overall developpment and ensure higher probability of keeping species high in stock and react on significant losses.