The global EPTO database:Worldwide occurrences of aquatic insects

Grigoropoulou, Afroditi and Hamid, Suhaila Ab and Acosta, Raúl and Akindele, Emmanuel Olusegun and Al‐Shami, Salman A. and Altermatt, Florian and Amatulli, Giuseppe and Angeler, David G. and Arimoro, Francis O. and Aroviita, Jukka and Astorga‐Roine, Anna and Bastos, Rafael Costa and Bonada, Núria and Boukas, Nikos and Brand, Cecilia and Bremerich, Vanessa and Bush, Alex and Cai, Qinghua and Callisto, Marcos and Chen, Kai and Cruz, Paulo Vilela and Dangles, Olivier and Death, Russell and Deng, Xiling and Domínguez, Eduardo and Dudgeon, David and Eriksen, Tor Erik and Faria, Ana Paula J. and Feio, Maria João and Fernández‐Aláez, Camino and Floury, Mathieu and García‐Criado, Francisco and García‐Girón, Jorge and Graf, Wolfram and Grönroos, Mira and Haase, Peter and Hamada, Neusa and He, Fengzhi and Heino, Jani and Holzenthal, Ralph and Huttunen, Kaisa‐Leena and Jacobsen, Dean and Jähnig, Sonja C. and Jetz, Walter and Johnson, Richard K. and Juen, Leandro and Kalkman, Vincent and Kati, Vassiliki and Keke, Unique N. and Koroiva, Ricardo and Kuemmerlen, Mathias and Langhans, Simone Daniela and Ligeiro, Raphael and Van Looy, Kris and Maasri, Alain and Marchant, Richard and Garcia Marquez, Jaime Ricardo and Martins, Renato T. and Melo, Adriano S. and Metzeling, Leon and Miserendino, Maria Laura and Moe, S. Jannicke and Molineri, Carlos and Muotka, Timo and Mustonen, Kaisa‐Riikka and Mykrä, Heikki and Cavalcante do Nascimento, Jeane Marcelle and Valente‐Neto, Francisco and Neu, Peter J. and Nieto, Carolina and Pauls, Steffen U. and Paulson, Dennis R. and Rios‐Touma, Blanca and Rodrigues, Marciel Elio and de Oliveira Roque, Fabio and Salazar Salina, Juan Carlos and Schmera, Dénes and Schmidt‐Kloiber, Astrid and Shah, Deep Narayan and Simaika, John P. and Siqueira, Tadeu and Tachamo‐Shah, Ram Devi and Theischinger, Günther and Thompson, Ross and Tonkin, Jonathan D. and Torres‐Cambas, Yusdiel and Townsend, Colin and Turak, Eren and Twardochleb, Laura and Wang, Beixin and Yanygina, Liubov and Zamora‐Muñoz, Carmen and Domisch, Sami (2023) The global EPTO database:Worldwide occurrences of aquatic insects. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 32 (5). pp. 642-655. ISSN 1466-822X

Abstract

Motivation: Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macroecological studies and applied freshwater research is missing. We aim to fill this gap and present the Global EPTO Database, which includes worldwide geo‐referenced aquatic insect occurrence records for four major taxa groups: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata (EPTO). Main type of variables contained: A total of 8,368,467 occurrence records globally, of which 8,319,689 (99%) are publicly available. The records are attributed to the corresponding drainage basin and sub‐catchment based on the Hydrography90m dataset and are accompanied by the elevation value, the freshwater ecoregion and the protection status of their location. Spatial location and grain: The database covers the global extent, with 86% of the observation records having coordinates with at least four decimal digits (11.1 m precision at the equator) in the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) coordinate reference system. Time period and grain: Sampling years span from 1951 to 2021. Ninety‐nine percent of the records have information on the year of the observation, 95% on the year and month, while 94% have a complete date. In the case of seven sub‐datasets, exact dates can be retrieved upon communication with the data contributors. Major taxa and level of measurement: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata, standardized at the genus taxonomic level. We provide species names for 7,727,980 (93%) records without further taxonomic verification. Software format: The entire tab‐separated value (.csv) database can be downloaded and visualized at https://glowabio.org/project/epto_database/. Fifty individual datasets are also available at https://fred.igb‐berlin.de, while six datasets have restricted access. For the latter, we share metadata and the contact details of the authors.