Willy De Prins

Secretary

Flemish Entomological Society

Biodiversity Newsflash 83 - November 2018. Access the full newsflash here.

1. Could you describe the Catalogue of Lepidoptera? 

The Atlas comprising all 2,649 Lepidoptera species ever recorded in Belgium, provides information on the systematics and the distribution per province, currently arranged in three time-periods: before 1980, between 1980 and 2004 and after 2004. Furthermore, the catalogue provides information on the larval host plants and short descriptions of all four stages in an insect's life (egg, caterpillar, pupa and adult). The Catalogue also presents many pictures illustrating adult specimens, but also the other life stages of insects, the host plants, and the habitats. The catalogue is kept updated on a daily basis, especially for the occurrences per province. Note that partly due to climate change, about ten Lepidoptera species are now recorded for the first time in Belgium every year.

2. How was the Atlas conceived, and how did the collaboration work between different institutions ? 

For many years, the Flemish Entomological Society maintained an offline database containing all these data. Making this information available online to the scientific community was important to us, and this became possible with the help of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform. After a few meetings with Nicolas Noé, IT expert of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, a first version of the website was created with the possibility for specialists to make changes to the data online. Suggestions from these users have considerably improved the website and further improvements are still going to be implemented in the near future. The website was officially launched on 9 September 2018 during a meeting of the Flemish Entomological Society and it is now available to all.

3. What is your wish for the future of the Catalogue of Lepidoptera ?

We hope that the Belgian Biodiversity Platform will keep on providing such services that are extremely useful to the scientific community. And we also hope that those involved in this project, the citizen scientists, and other stakeholders will participate in our efforts to add information and photographs to the Catalogue.