Grasshopper country before and after: a resurvey of Ken Key's collecting expeditions in New South Wales, Australia, 70 years on

Abstract

Recent reports of insect declines across Europe and other parts of the world have emphasised the generally poor baseline that exists for assessing changes in biodiversity. One important source of untapped baseline distribution data is field notebooks, which are often associated with the collection activities of museums and other scientific institutions and may be decades or even centuries old. Over 220 field notebooks are associated with the grasshopper (Caelifera) collection in the Australian National Insect Collection, containing detailed notes on the times and places species were collected as well as vegetation and soil descriptions. In 2019, we resurveyed 45 locations from three of these..