Texas Biological Diversity

Biological Research Stations

    Texas

• Brackenridge Field Laboratory - Austin - University of Texas
• Coastal Studies Laboratory - South Padre Island - UTRGV
• Indio Mountains Research Station - Hudspeth County - University of Texas at El Paso
• Llano River Field Station - Junction - Texas Tech University
• Marine Science Institute - Port Aransas - University of Texas
• Stengl “Lost Pines” Biological Station - Smithville - University of Texas
• Timberlake Biological Field Station - Goldthwaite - Talton State University
  
• Welder Wildlife Foundation - Sinton
  

    Arkansas

• Ouachita Mountains Biological Station - LSU - Shreveport, LA

    Louisiana

• Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium - Chauvin
• Turtle Cove Environmental Research Station - Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond

    New Mexico

• Sevilleta Field Station - University of New Mexico

    Oklahoma

• Oklahoma Biological Survey - University of Oklahoma

  • Working List of Rare Oklahoma Invertebrates

• Selman Living Laboratory - University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond

• University of Oklahoma Biological Station - Kingston

Checklists - (Invertebrate)

• Crayfish of Texas - Carnegie Museum of Natural History

• Mayflies of Texas - by County - USGS

• Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas - John C. Abbott 

• Stoneflies of Texas - by County - USGS

• Guide to the psocids of Texas - Diane W. Young

• Tiger Beetles of Texas - by County - USGS

• Butterfly Checklists by Region

• Moths of Texas - by County - USGS

• The Sphingidae of Texas - Bill Oehlke

Rare Species Lists - (Invertebrate)

• Texas Endangered Invertebrate Species

• Texas Invertebrate Species of Concern (partial list)

• Butterflies Unique to the Lower Rio Grande Valley

Diversity-Ranking 

Top 10 States or Regions of the U.S. with the Greatest Butterfly Diversity

McDaniel, N. 2002. Texas is second-most biologically diverse state in U.S. Nature Conservancy, San Antonio, TX. Press Release.

Stein, B.A. 2002. States of the Union: Ranking America’s Biodiversity. NatureServe, Arlington, Virginia. 25 pp.

R.E. Stanford & P.A. Opler. 1993. Atlas of western USA butterflies, including adjacent parts of Canada and Mexico. Published by authors. Denver, Colorado. 275 pp. 

Centres of Plant Diversity and Endemism - Smithsonian

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Species Richness and Trends of Western Butterflies and Moths - Paul A. Opler

Number of species of selected Lepidoptera by state:

Ento Counts & Blitzes (other Texas Entomological Events)

 

ENTOBLITZ  April   http://entoblitz.tamu.edu Annually Since 2000	4th of July Butterfly Counts  Late June to Mid July North American Butterfly Association (NABA) 25 Texas locations in 2001 www.naba.org/counts.html - Map of TX Counts (All Counts) Annually since 1975

Museum Collections - (Invertebrate)

• Texas A&M University, Department of Entomology - College Station 
• Texas Memorial Museum, Invertebrate Zoology - Austin
• Texas Tech University-Invertebrate Zoology (TTUZ) - Lubbock
• University of Texas Insect Collection (UTIC) - Austin

Databases - (Invertebrate & Botanical)

• NatureServe Explorer - information on plants, animals, and ecological communities of the U.S. and Canada.

• Illinois Natural History Survey

  • Ephemeroptera specimen collection database

  • Plecoptera specimen collection database

  • Trichoptera specimen collection database

• Lepidoptera - Markku Savela

• Caterpillars, Pupae, Butterflies & Moths of Guanacaste, Costa Rica - dynamic event-based database for northwestern Costa Rica

• Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas - John C. Abbott 

Botanical

• Digital Flora Of Texas Herbarium Specimen Browser - TAMU
• Native Plant Database - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center - UT, Austin
• Texas Plant Information Database - TPWD
• USDA Plants Database - USDA

Taxonomy - (Invertebrate & Plant)

• Land Snails of Texas - Kathryn E. Perez

• Invertebrates - Collection of Lists of Various Taxa - Nearctica

• Nomina Insecta Nearctica - A Checklist of the Insects of North America

• Spiders of Texas - Spiders of North America - Common Names Of Arachnids - The American Arachnological Society

• The Mayflies of Texas

• Mayflies of North America - Mayfly Central, Purdue University

• A Distributional Checklist of the Beetles (Coleoptera) of Florida - Stewart B. Peck & Michael C. Thomas

• Scientific Names List for Butterfly Species of North America, North of Mexico - P.A. Opler and A.D. Warren
  
  

• Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Texas - TAMU

Mexico

• Mexican Biodiversity - Viva Natura
• Mexican Butterfly Diversity - Manuel A. Balcázar-Lara

USA  

• Biodiversity Levels of Karst Landforms in the United States -  David Culver

• California Floristic Province - Conservation International 

• Centers for Plant Diversity and Endemism - Smithsonian Institution, WWF, IUCN

• Diversity and Abundance of Insects - Ronald W. Hodges

• Odonata Diversity and Sampling Effort in the Lower 48 United States - Dennis Paulson

North America

• Caribbean Islands Hotspot - Conservation International 

• Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Hotspot - Conservation International 

Western Hemisphere

• Mesoamerica Hotspot - Conservation International 

Graph Comparing Bird and Butterfly Diversity (Robbins & Opler, 1996)

(First locality should be Greenland)

Global Diversity Comparison (Robbins & Opler, 1996)

Among the well-known taxonomic groups of terrestrial animals, butterflies have the greatest number of species. With 17,500 species, they are three to five times more numerous than mammals, amphibians, mosquitoes, termites, or dragonflies. There are approximately two species of butterflies for every species of non-marine bird, and a bit less than three species of butterflies for every one of reptiles.

Bibliography of Biological Diversity Publications

Balcázar, M.A.L. 1997. Mexican butterfly diversity. American Butterflies 5(4):28-35.

Bálint, Z. & K. Johnson. 1995. Neotropical polyommatine diversity and affinities. I. Relationships of the higher taxa (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae). Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 41(3):211-235.

Boettner, G. 2002. When Biodiversity meets Biocontrol: The Thin Green Line Between Insect Conservation and Insect Control. Conservation Perspectives, the eJournal of the New England Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology.

Colwell, R.K. & J.A. Coddington. 1994. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 345:101-118.

Colwell, R.K., C. Rahbek & N.J. Gotelli. 2004. The mid-domain effect and species richness patterns: what have we learned so far? American Naturalist 163(3):E1-E23.

Danks, H.V. 1994. Regional Diversity of Insects in North America. American Entomologist 40(1):50-55.

DeVries, P.J. 1994. Patterns of butterfly diversity and promising topics in natural history and ecology. Pp. 187-194 in: McDade, L.A., K.S. Bawa, H.S. Hespenheide, & G.S. Hartshorn, editors. La Selva, Ecology and Natural History of a Neotropical Rain Forest. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

DeVries, P.J., I.A. Chacon, & D. Murray. 1992. Towards a better understanding of host use and biodiversity in riodinid butterflies (Lepidoptera). Journal of Research on Lepidoptera 31(1-2):103-126.

DeVries, P.J., D. Murray, & R. Lande. 1997. Species diversity in vertical, horizontal, and temporal dimensions of a fruit-feeding butterfly community in an Ecuadorian rainforest. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 62:343-364.

Erwin, T.L. 1988. The tropical forest canopy--The heart of biotic diversity. Pp. 123-129 in: E.O. Wilson (ed.), Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Erwin, T.L. 1997. Biodiversity at its utmost: Tropical forest beetles. Pp. 27-40 in: M.L. Reaka-Kudla, D.E. Wilson, & E.O. Wilson (eds.), Biodiversity II. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C.

Gilbert, L.E. 1991. Biodiversity of a Central American Heliconius community: Pattern, process, and problems. Pp. 403-427 in: Price, P.W., T.M. Lewinsohn, G.W. Fernandes & W.W. Benson. editors. Plant-Animal interactions: Evolutionary ecology in tropical and temperate regions. Wiley, New York. Spanish translation.

Hafernik, J.E. 1992. Threats to invertebrate biodiversity: implications for conservation strategies. in:  Fiedler, P.L. & S. K. Jain, editors. Conservation Biology: The theory and practice of nature conservation, preservation and management. Chapman and Hall, New York.

Hawksworth, D.L. & J.M. Ritchie. 1993. Biodiversity and Biosystematic Priorities: Microorganisms and Invertebrates. CABI, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 128 pp.

Heppner, J.B. 1991. Faunal regions and the diversity of Lepidoptera. Tropical Lepidoptera 2(Suppl. 1):1-85.

Holloway, J.D. & Stork, N.E. (1991): The dimensions of biodiversity: the use of invertebrates as indicators of human impact Pp. 37-62 in: Hawksworth, D.L. editor. The Biodiversity of Microorganisms and Invertebrates: Its Role in Sustainable Agriculture. CAB International, Wallingford.

Johnson, K. 1978. Specificity, geographic distribution and foodplant diversity in four Callophrys. Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society 32(1): 3-19.

Kocher, S.D. & E.H. Williams. 2000. The Diversity and Abundance of North American Butterflies Vary with Habitat Disturbance and Geography. Journal of Biogeography 27, 785–794.

Llorente-Bousquets, J. & Luis-Martínez, A. 1993. Conservation-oriented analysis of Mexican butterflies: Papilionidae (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea). Pp. 147-177 in: Ramamoorthy, T.P., Bye, R., Lot, A. & Fa, J.E., editors. Biological Diversity of Mexico: Origins and Distribution. Oxford University Press, New York.

Luis, A.M., J.B. Llorente, I.F. Vargas & A.D. Warren. 2003. Biodiversity and biogeography of Mexican butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 105(1):209-224.

Mann, C.C. 1994. Fire ants parlay their queens into a threat to biodiversity. Science 263:1560-1561.

Morrison, L.W. & S.D. Porter. 2003. Positive association between densities of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), and generalized ant and arthropod diversity. Environmental Entomology 32:548-554.

Naeem, S., Thompson, L.J., Lawler, S.P., Lawton, J.H. & Woodfin, R.M. 1994. Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems. Nature 368:734–737.

Opler, P.A. 1995. Conservation and management of butterfly diversity in North America. in: A.S. Pullin, editor. Ecology and Conservation of Butterflies. Chapman and Hall, London.

Peterson, A.T., O.A. Flores, L.S. León, J.E. Llorente, A.M. Luis, A.G. Navarro, M.G. Torres & I. Vargas. 1993. Conservation priorities in Mexico:

Moving up in the world. Biodiversity Letters 1(2):33-38.

Pimm, S.L. & J.H. Brown. 2004. Domains of diversity. Science 304:831-833.

Pyle, R.M., Bentzien, M., and Opler, P. 1981. Insect conservation. Annual Review of Entomology. 26:233-258

Ramamoorthy, T.P., R. Bye, A. Lot & J. Fa, editors. 1993. Biological Diversity of Mexico: Origins and Distribution. Oxford University Press, N.Y. 

Riley, E.G. in press. Proceedings of the 2004 Wildlife Diversity Conference. Texas Parks & Wildlife, San Marcos, Texas.

Robbins, R.K. & P.A. Opler. 1996. Butterfly Diversity and a Preliminary Comparison with Bird and Mammal Diversity. Pp. 69-82 in: M.L. Reaka-Kudla, D.E. Wilson, and E.O. Wilson, Editors; 1997. Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC.

Soule, M.E., editor. 1986. The Science of Scarcity and Diversity. Sinauer Association, Sunderland, MA. 584 pp.

Stein, B.A. 2002. States of the Union: Ranking America’s Biodiversity. NatureServe, Arlington, Virginia. 25 pp.

Stein, B.A., L.S. Kutner & J.S. Adams, editors. 2000. Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. Oxford University Press. 416 pp.

Stork, N.E. 1988. Insect diversity: facts, fiction, and speculation. Biological Journal on the Linnean Society 35:321-aF337.

Stork, N.E. 1997. Measuring global biodiversity and its decline. Pp. 41-68 in: M.L. Reaka- Kudla, D.E. Wilson & E.O. Wilson (eds.), Biodiversity II. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C.

Tyler, H.A., K.S. Brown, Jr. & K.H. Wilson. 1994. Swallowtail butterflies of the Americas: A study in biological dynamics, ecological diversity, biosystematics, and conservation. Scientific Publishers, Gainesville. 376 pp.

Wheeler, Q.D. 1990. Insect diversity and cladistic constraints. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 83(6):1031-1047.

Wilson, E.O., editor. 1988. Biodiversity. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Wilson, E.O. 1992. The Diversity of Life. W.W. Norton & Co., N.Y.

14 May 2011 © Mike Quinn / entomike@gmail.com / Texas Entomology