Aquatic Hemiptera - Heteroptera in Suffolk
Distribution Maps
An important event will soon take place in the world of aquatic bug recording. (Not a very large world it has to be admitted but nonetheless a very enthusiastic one!) Thomas Huxley of Perth in Scotland has managed to persuade, bully and cajole the vast majority of recorders to send all past data in to him and has produced distribution maps for the UK. Hopefully by the end of this year the very first Provisional Atlas of aquatic bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera) of Britain will be published by the Biological Records Centre, Monks Wood.
To this end I, as aquatic invertebrate recorder for the SNS made sure that I sent all Suffolk records in by the closing date. This also gave me the push I needed to assemble county distribution maps. So, by the time this edition of White Admiral is published the distribution maps for all species of aquatic bugs recorded in Suffolk will have been published on the Internet.
I
know that publishing in this way is not quite the same as
reading a glossy, newly printed SNS
atlas by the fireside in the winter. However it is much, much cheaper and can
be kept up to date at regular intervals. It will, I hope, attract comment and
maybe even some new records from naturalists who browse the maps. It also, as
far I am aware, makes Suffolk the first county to publish maps in this way. I
would like to thank everyone who sent me records and offer the encouragement of
seeing their ‘dot’ on an internet distribution map to anyone else who might
have records to send. An example of the map for Velia caprai (the
Water Cricket) is included here, you can log on and view the rest on the
Freshwater Invertebrate Survey of Suffolk website at: www.suffolk-nature.co.uk following the link to distribution maps.
Adrian Chalkley
SNS
Recorder for Aquatic Invertebrates
