The following dataset presents all of the specimen records included in the paper titled: Distributional and species richness patterns of the stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) in New York State. This paper is published in Biodiversity Data Journal. This dataset combines specimen record data from Colorado State University Insect Collection, Lake Champlain Research Institute, New York State Museum, Illinois Natural History Survey Insect Collection, Cornell University Insect Collection, and several other institutional, personal, and literature records. The data includes specimens to their lowest possible taxonomic rank based on identification and determination. The data includes geo-references for all specimens. This data file contains a total of 6553 records, structured in 62 columns of data in DwCA format.
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables.
The core data table contains 6,553 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Myers L, Kondratieff B, Grubbs S, Pett L, DeWalt R E, Mihuc T, Hart L (2025). Distributional and species richness patterns of the stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) in New York State: occurrence dataset. Version 1.1. Biodiversity Data Journal. Occurrence dataset. https://ipt.pensoft.net/resource?r=ny-plecoptera-data-v1&v=1.1
New York State, USA
| Bounding Coordinates |
South West [40.575, -79.741], North East [44.994, -72.941] |
This dataset combines New York Plecoptera specimen record data from Colorado State University Insect Collection, Lake Champlain Research Institute, New York State Museum, Illinois Natural History Survey Insect Collection, Cornell University Insect Collection, and several other institutional, personal, and literature records. The data includes specimens to their lowest possible taxonomic rank based on identification and determination. Our analyses of 6,538 records from 1375 unique locations confirm the presence of 127 species in 42 genera across nine families, representing 58 of the 62 counties of the state.
| Order |
Plecoptera
|
| Family |
Perlidae,
Leuctridae,
Chloroperlidae,
Peltoperlidae,
Taeniopterygidae,
Pteronarcyidae,
Capniidae,
Nemouridae,
Perlodidae
|
| Start Date / End Date |
1882-07-18 / 2023-08-15 |
There is a 187-year history of stonefly (Insecta, Plecoptera) research in New York State. In total, 29 current valid species have a type locality in this state. Despite several new species' descriptions and numerous other papers discussing stoneflies in general from New York, a comprehensive treatment of the state's fauna is lacking. In this treatment we provide a comprehensive approach to assessing distribution and diversity patterns across multiple dimensions, focusing on adult flight periods, habitat associations, elevation gradients, United States Geological Survey Hierarchical Unit Code (HUC8) drainages, and United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Level IV Ecoregions.
This work is based on recent fieldwork, exhaustive searches of museums and research collections for specimens and accumulation of specimen data from peer-reviewed literature. Our analyses of 6,538 records from 1375 unique locations confirm the presence of 127 species in 42 genera across nine families, representing 58 of the 62 counties of the state. Nine new state records are presented with three known only from historical collections prior to 1970. Further analyses produced for all species include adult flight periods, elevational ranges, and distributional affinities across HUC8s and USEPA Level IV Ecoregions. This research will provide the basis for future conservation decisions in the state, identify gaps in our current knowledge, and elucidate needs for future research. A specimen data set has been associated with this document to aid in future assessments.
| Title |
Distributional and species richness patterns of the stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) in New York State |
| Funding |
Much of the support for fieldwork, especially from 2008-2012, was made possible through grants funded by the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, Albany, New York and the New York State Wildlife Grants Program. Fieldwork after 2012 was partially funded through the Lake Champlain Research Institute at SUNY Plattsburgh. Funding to support this project in the later stages of manuscript preparation and data analysis was provided, in part, under the Northeast Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) Grant Program administered by a Wildlife Management Institute subaward RCN 2023-03 through USFWS. Karen Terwilliger (Terwilliger Consulting, Inc.) kick-started our research on NE RSGCNs and encouraged us to seek funding opportunities. The Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee supported our endeavor and helped us to secure USFWS funding for us to study NE RSGCNs. Mack Frantz (West Virginia Department of Natural Resources) and Dee Blanton (USFWS) led us through the proposal submission process. We would like to thank the late Dr. Boris C. Kondratieff for his tremendous contributions to aquatic entomology and to this study including countless hours spent in the field and identifying specimens with the lead author throughout the state. Eileen Allen and Mark Baran, SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh NY for assistance with GIS. Dr. Richard Baumann, Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Provo, Utah, provided material for examination as well as verifications of stonefly specimens and traveled with us for several days in New York during surveys of Long Island northward to Northern New York. Dr. Janet R. Mihuc, Paul Smith’s College, Robert W. Bode, New York State Stream DEC Stream Biomonitoring Unit, Erin White, New York State Natural Heritage Program, Albany NY, and Paul G. Novak and Joe Racette, New York State DEC, provided assistance in the field. Access to private lands on the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Huntington Research Forest in Newcomb, New York was made possible through the efforts of Stacy A. McNulty. Dr. Marilyn Jordan, The Nature Conservancy, Cold Spring Harbor, NY provided assistance in the field and helped organize permits and logistics for a succesful sampling trip on Long Island. Access to private lands and assistance in collections of specimens at Shingle Shanty Research Station was made possible by Steve Langdon, Saranac Lake, NY. Phillip Hogan, University of Illinois provided specimens and provided R-code for developing elevation box plots. David Rabideau, Nashua, New Hampshire also provided assistance in the construction of a database used during this research. Beth Conrey, Berthoud, Colorado provided numerous hours of assistance compiling records from field surveys. Chris Verdone, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Dr. John Sandberg, California State University at Chico provided valuable suggestions regarding study design in addition to verification of specimens. Dr. Tim L. McCabe, New York State Museum, Albany, New York; Dr. Richard E. Hoebeke and Dr. Jason Dombroski, Cornell University Insect Collection, Ithaca, New York; Dr. Colin Favret, then at the Illinois Natural History Survey; Dr. Owen Lonsdale, Canadian National Insect Collection, Ottawa, Ontario; Dr. Shawn Clark, Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, provided specimens for examination. Martin Rosenfeld and C. Cutietta-Olson, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Valhalla, New York provided additional data and specimens. |
| Study Area Description |
New York State |
The personnel involved in the project:
Standard collection methods included the use of beating sheets, sweep nets, aerial nets to dislodge adults from riparian vegetation, visual searching along bridges to obtain winter-emergent species, ultraviolet light traps on warm summer evenings mainly for Perlidae, and rearing of immatures to the adult stage in a Frigid Units Living Stream (Frigid Units, Inc., Toledo Ohio, USA). Location coordinates were formatted to latitude and longitude decimal degrees using a Garmin GPS unit. Most field-collected specimens were preserved on site with 70-95% ethanol.
| Study Extent |
This project involved field sampling from 2008 through 2023 and was scheduled to coincide with adult presence of targeted taxa throughout the state of New York. |
Method step description:
-
Adult male stoneflies are usually required for accurate species identification (Stark and Armitage 2000, Stark and Armitage 2004, Grubbs and Baumann 2023, Ross and Ricker 1971). Because males of several genera of Perlidae (i.e., Perlesta Banks, 1906 and Acroneuria Pictet, 1841) and Isoperla have an aedeagus that needs to be fully everted to ensure positive identification, they were often kept alive for several hours to several days prior to processing in the laboratory.
| Collection Name |
Brigham Young University Collection, Provo, Utah |
| Collection Name |
Charlie H. Nelson Personal Collection, Chattanooga, Tennessee |
| Collection Name |
Cleveland Museum of Natural History |
| Collection Name |
C. P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity Colorado State University, Fort Collins |
| Collection Name |
Cornell University Insect Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York |
| Collection Name |
University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada |
| Collection Name |
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois |
| Collection Name |
Illinois Natural History Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Collection Name |
Iowa State Insect Insect Collection, Ames, Iowa |
| Collection Name |
Lake Champlain Research Institute, SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, New York |
| Collection Name |
Martin Rosenfeld Personal Collection |
| Collection Name |
Michigan State University, East Lansing |
| Collection Name |
University of Notre Dame, Museum of Biodiversity Arthropod Collection |
| Collection Name |
New York City Department of Environmental Protection |
| Collection Name |
New York State Museum, Albany, New York |
| Collection Name |
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency |
| Collection Name |
Purdue University Entomology Research Collection, West Lafayette, Indiana |
| Collection Name |
Phillip N. Hogan Collection, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
| Collection Name |
University of Michigan Museum of Zoology |
| Collection Name |
University of Minnesota St. Paul |
| Collection Name |
University of Vermont Insect Collection, Burlington, Vermont |
| Collection Name |
University of Wisconsin Insect Research Collection, Madison |
| Collection Name |
Western Kentucky University Collection, Bowling Green |
| Specimen preservation methods |
Alcohol
|
-
Sánchez-Bayo F, Wyckhuys KG (2019)
Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biological Conservation 232: 8‑27.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020
-
Wagner D, Grames E, Forister M, Berenbaum M, Stopak D (2021)
Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (2).
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023989118
-
Soga M, Gaston KJ (2018)
Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences, and implications. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 16 (4): 222‑230.
https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.1794
-
Stark BP, Armitage BP (Eds) (2000)
Stoneflies (Plecoptera) of eastern North America, Volume I. Pteronarcyidae, Peltoperlidae, and Taeniopterygidae. Ohio Biological Survey Bulletin, New Series. 14(1), Columbus, OH, 100 pp. [ISBN 0-86727-142-6]
-
Stark BP, Armitage BP (Eds) (2004)
Stoneflies (Plecoptera) of eastern North America, Volume II. Chloroperlidae, Perlidae, and Perlodidae (Perlodinae). Ohio Biological Survey Bulletin, New Series. 14 (4), Columbus, OH, 192 pp. [ISBN 0-86727-151-5]
-
Grubbs SA, Baumann RW (2023)
The Nemourinae (Insecta, Nemouridae) of the eastern Nearctic. Zootaxa 5306 (1): 1‑53.
https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5306.1.1
-
Ross HH, Ricker WE (1971)
The classification, evolution, and dispersal of the winter stonefly genus Allocapnia. Illinois Biological Monographs 45: 1‑166.
https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.50280
| Acknowledgements |
Much of the support for fieldwork, especially from 2008-2012, was made possible through grants funded by the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, Albany, New York and the New York State Wildlife Grants Program. Fieldwork after 2012 was partially funded through the Lake Champlain Research Institute at SUNY Plattsburgh. Funding to support this project in the later stages of manuscript preparation and data analysis was provided, in part, under the Northeast Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) Grant Program administered by a Wildlife Management Institute subaward RCN 2023-03 through USFWS. Karen Terwilliger (Terwilliger Consulting, Inc.) kick-started our research on NE RSGCNs and encouraged us to seek funding opportunities. The Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee supported our endeavor and helped us to secure USFWS funding for us to study NE RSGCNs. Mack Frantz (West Virginia Department of Natural Resources) and Dee Blanton (USFWS) led us through the proposal submission process. We would like to thank the late Dr. Boris C. Kondratieff for his tremendous contributions to aquatic entomology and to this study including countless hours spent in the field and identifying specimens with the lead author throughout the state.
Eileen Allen and Mark Baran, SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh NY for assistance with GIS. Dr. Richard Baumann, Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Provo, Utah, provided material for examination as well as verifications of stonefly specimens and traveled with us for several days in New York during surveys of Long Island northward to Northern New York. Dr. Janet R. Mihuc, Paul Smith’s College, Robert W. Bode, New York State Stream DEC Stream Biomonitoring Unit, Erin White, New York State Natural Heritage Program, Albany NY, and Paul G. Novak and Joe Racette, New York State DEC, provided assistance in the field. Access to private lands on the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Huntington Research Forest in Newcomb, New York was made possible through the efforts of Stacy A. McNulty. Dr. Marilyn Jordan, The Nature Conservancy, Cold Spring Harbor, NY provided assistance in the field and helped organize permits and logistics for a succesful sampling trip on Long Island. Access to private lands and assistance in collections of specimens at Shingle Shanty Research Station was made possible by Steve Langdon, Saranac Lake, NY. Phillip Hogan, University of Illinois provided specimens and provided R-code for developing elevation box plots. David Rabideau, Nashua, New Hampshire also provided assistance in the construction of a database used during this research. Beth Conrey, Berthoud, Colorado provided numerous hours of assistance compiling records from field surveys. Chris Verdone, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Dr. John Sandberg, California State University at Chico provided valuable suggestions regarding study design in addition to verification of specimens. Dr. Tim L. McCabe, New York State Museum, Albany, New York; Dr. Richard E. Hoebeke and Dr. Jason Dombroski, Cornell University Insect Collection, Ithaca, New York; Dr. Colin Favret, then at the Illinois Natural History Survey; Dr. Owen Lonsdale, Canadian National Insect Collection, Ottawa, Ontario; Dr. Shawn Clark, Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, provided specimens for examination. Martin Rosenfeld and C. Cutietta-Olson, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Valhalla, New York provided additional data and specimens. |
| Introduction |
The rapidly changing climate and continued expansion of the human footprint is leading to dramatic declines in the entomofauna of the world (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019, Wagner et al. 2021). Assessing the baseline of a fauna is difficult because of the lack of taxonomic expertise and the massive effort needed to accumulate pertinent historical and contemporary occurrence data. Often, studies fall short in these respects and depend entirely on contemporary data, frequently leading to a lack of historical context and a baseline that is biased toward recent sampling. This entails a shifted-baseline result (Soga and Gaston 2018). We present a monograph of the Plecoptera of New York State that is predicated on balancing the historical and contemporary data sources through re-examination of historical museum specimens, contemporary sampling of the entire state, and accumulation of trusted literature records into a single occurrence data set. This data set is provided to aid New York State conservation organizations in their efforts to assess the conservation status of this environmentally sensitive order of insects. In addition, we recount the history of stonefly research conducted in New York, discuss the known sensitivity of stoneflies to changes in climate and water quality, and summarize the pertinent physical attributes of New York state as they pertain to stonefly distribution and macroecology. We provide an updated checklist and discussion of each species, conduct analyses of completeness of sampling, assess stonefly diversity relationships to drainages and ecological classifications, and provide detailed distributional maps for all species. |
| Purpose |
There is a 187-year history of stonefly (Insecta, Plecoptera) research in New York State. In total, 29 current valid species have a type locality in this state. Despite several new species' descriptions and numerous other papers discussing stoneflies in general from New York, a comprehensive treatment of the state's fauna is lacking. In this treatment we provide a comprehensive approach to assessing distribution and diversity patterns across multiple dimensions, focusing on adult flight periods, habitat associations, elevation gradients, United States Geological Survey Hierarchical Unit Code (HUC8) drainages, and United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Level IV Ecoregions.
This work is based on recent fieldwork, exhaustive searches of museums and research collections for specimens and accumulation of specimen data from peer-reviewed literature. Our analyses of 6,538 records from 1375 unique locations confirm the presence of 127 species in 42 genera across nine families, representing 58 of the 62 counties of the state. Nine new state records are presented with three known only from historical collections prior to 1970. Further analyses produced for all species include adult flight periods, elevational ranges, and distributional affinities across HUC8s and USEPA Level IV Ecoregions. This research will provide the basis for future conservation decisions in the state, identify gaps in our current knowledge, and elucidate needs for future research. A specimen data set has been associated with this document to aid in future assessments. |
| Alternative Identifiers |
c7851c42-e356-488d-8a9c-d96c3e4e029e |
|
https://ipt.pensoft.net/resource?r=ny-plecoptera-data-v1 |
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0775-0416