The Vermont Orthoptera Atlas has now amassed nearly 5,500 records of grasshopper, cricket, and katydid (Orthoptera) species, adding nine new species for the state over the last five years. There have now been 91 species documented in Vermont, with three of them now considered to be of conservation concern and six introduced species.
Although Vermont has not benefited from a formal statewide survey of Orthoptera, the Vermont Atlas of Life has instead drawn on more than 60 years of recorded observations beginning with the work of entomologists Ross and Joyce Bell and continuing today with the help of community scientists and experts.
Dot map created created by Ross and Joyce Bell from their collection trips. Each dot was digitized and shared with the atlas
During the 1960s Ross and Joyce Bell at the University of Vermont began a natural history survey to document the invertebrate fauna of Vermont. Through this work they built the UVM Zadock Thompson Zoological Collections into an important resource for science and conservation. They inspired us here at VCE to launch the Vermont Atlas of Life. where we’ve helped to digitize, publish, and archive some of their amazing work, including their hand-drawn Vermont Orthoptera dot maps, which are the original basis for this atlas.
Their surveys, spanning a period from around 1960 to early 2000s, comprised nearly 1,300 records assembled as hand drawn dot maps for each species. Each time they, or their students, found a new record for a species, they added a dot on a map in the area of the town for which it was located. Year after year, collection after collection, they slowly built the first faunal checklist and range maps for the state. By 1999, they had recorded 72 species.
Each year we expand the atlas by adding data submitted through iNaturalist Vermont and museum collections that are more and more becoming digital. It takes an entire village to build an atlas like this–volunteer naturalists, students, field biologists, museums, and taxonomic experts.
Number of records added to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) each year. Note the number of annual records added since the Vermont Atlas of Life began in 2013.
