Illinois Natural History Survey Reports

              1
I LLINOIS
NATURAL
HI STORY
S U R V E Y R e p o r t s
July/
August 1997
No. 346
I N S I D E
Cover-crop Mulches
for Alternative
Production of
Vegetable Crops
2
Differences in Food
Consumption and Meta-bolic
Rates
Among Walleye Stocks
3
Computer Information
System for Wildlife
4
New Publications and
Educational Materials
5
Species Spotlight:
American Lotus
6
The Naturalist's
Apprentice:
Floating Flora and
Fauna
7
Continued on back page
On-line List of the Organisms of Illinois
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The answer to the question, What
animals and plants live in Illinois?
is not an easy one. According to
one estimate, at least 53,754 or-ganisms
are known from Illinois.
Some groups (e.g., vertebrates,
fl owering plants) are well known;
others (e.g., insects and fungi) are
poorly known. No single location
lists all of these organisms. Also,
some lists would be exceptionally
long!
Because of the biotic surveys
that have been completed in
Illinois, it is one of the few
states that has attempted
even to estimate the num-ber
of species found
within its boundaries.
The research of the past
century and a half at the Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS)
has accumulated in the form of
many papers, reports, and care-fully
documented collections of
specimens. However, there has
been no single list of the organ-isms
in Illinois either in print or in
computer format. Published lists
of various groups of organisms,
while as complete as the research-ers
could make them, were by
their very nature outdated as soon
as they appeared in print. Not
only do animals and plants move
around as individuals or in the
form of seeds and spores, but pro-fessional
botanists and zoologists
also discover new species, and
uncover mistakes in naming or-ganisms
(nomenclature) that must
be corrected. A centralized, easily
updated and widely available list
of Illinois organisms would be
extremely valuable to government
agencies, educators, students, farm-ers,
and others with an interest in
the state’s fl ora and fauna.
In order to make a summary
listing of the organisms of Illinois
available to the general public
and research community, INHS
researchers made a proposal to the
former National Biological Service
(NBS) to gather the information
by taxonomic group and to make
it available on the Internet. The
primary reason for the project was
to help stabilize the names in use
for Illinois species of plants and
animals and to provide a useful
and concise reference for those
attempting to work with the Il-linois
biota.
The partial funding of the
database on Illinois organisms
resulted in the entry of the best-known
(and more “popular”)
groups of plants and animals
into the database followed by
lesser-known (and less “popular”)
groups as time permitted. Two