IMIS

Geographic coverage: The Belgian Coccinellidae dataset deals with Ladybirds occurrences in Belgian. The INBO subset deals with occurrences pertaining to Flanders, one of the regions and communities of Belgium.
Taxonomic coverage: All species in this dataset are ladybird beetles (Coccinellidae). The top 3 recorded species are Coccinella septempunctata (15%), the invasive Harmonia axyridis (13%), and Propylea quatuordecimpunctata (10%).
Sampling methods: Collection events minimally consist of species, number of individuals, stage (adults, larvae and pupae), observation date, observer and location. Locations are attributed to 1x1 km or 5x5 km grid cells of the UTM grid (Universal Transverse Mercator). At present, the database contains about 60.000 records, of which 15% come from museum collections and literature data. A large part of the Belgian territory has now been surveyed for ladybird beetles: the database contains records for 85% of all 5x5km UTM grid cells (N = 1376) in Belgium. Additionally, information on substratum plants, height in the vegetation, sampling method, habitat type, surrounding landscape, slope orientation, soil type, humidity, vegetation cover and behaviour was noted on the recording form. In certain cases Individualcount is an estimate of the actual number of specimen present.
Study extent: In 1999, the Belgian Ladybird Working Group Coccinula launched a large scale field survey on 40 native ladybird species (Coccinellinae, Chilocorinae and Epilachninae) and to date has more than 500 volunteers providing distribution data. They actively search for ladybird beetles in a variety of habitats using sweep nets, beating trays, visual search, light trapping, pitfall traps and other sampling methods. Distribution, habitat and substrate plant information is also noted on a standard recording form. The working group maintains a database of observations, literature and collection data of Coccinellidae from 1800 onwards. Preliminary atlases have been published for the whole Belgian territory (Branquart et al., 1999; Adriaens and Maes, 2004) and updated distribution maps are available online, on demand and through the working group's newsletter. The published dataset contains most of the data maintained by the working group. For the time being, only the original INBO database is published. Quality control: All records are validated.
The publication of this dataset was supported by the INBO as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.