The purpose of this project was mainly to collect information about the distribution, faunistics and ecology of grasshoppers and crickets in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. The working group produced a newsletter which appeared irregularly in the period 1989-2002 with the intention to inform observers about latest findings, interesting observations, ecological research etc., provide feedback to naturalists and to raise awareness about the conservation value of Orthoptera in general. During this periode, the working group was most active and organised annual weekends, in turn organized in Belgium, the Netherlands and sometimes also northern France . These weekends were intended to perform inventories for badly prospected regions and to stimulate knowledge exchange between collaborators. In 1997, a standard work on the grasshoppers and crickets of The Netherlands was published using data from this project (Kleukers et al. 1997). In 2000, a provisional atlas and red lists of grasshoppers and crickets in Flanders , Brussels and Wallonia was published (Decleer et al. 2000), providing the first major output of this faunistic project for Belgium. As a consequence, the interest for grasshoppers and crickets in conservation increased, as these insects became important indicators of natural quality and successful nature management. After this milestone, the working group lost some incentive, the network of volunteers was no longer professionally supported and Saltabel became less active. In 2006, a dedicated survey was organised in Brussels Capital Region through the SaltaBru project, greatly increasing the number of records for this region. More recently, Saltabel became a study group of the Flemish NGO Natuurpunt and the working group revived with numerous activities and a growing number of recorders involved (http://www.saltabel.org). Since 2011, the online encoding platform http://www.waarnemingen.be is promoted and used for online reporting of records. Since 2012, the focus of the working group was put on enhancing the knowledge of threatened species in Flanders, with dedicated surveys prospecting historically known locations of e.g. Stenobothrus stigmaticus, Stenobothrus lineatus and Ephippiger ephippiger. The database described here, however, does not contain these recent records. The Netherlands are currently also working on a new atlas through waarneming.nl (http://www.waarneming.nl/sprinkhaanatlas_start.php).
Geographic coverage: This dataset contains Orthoptera occurrences in Belgium.
Taxonomic coverage: This dataset contains occurrences of the order Orthoptera (grasshoppers & crickets), from the families Tettigoniidae, Gryllidae, Gryllotalpidae, Tetrigidae, and Acrididae.
Sampling methods: The data mostly comprise loose human observations by volunteer naturalists. Also a significant amount of records originate from net sampling and the intelligent use of bat detectors, and digitized data from existing museum and university collections in Belgium.
Study extent: The data are gathered in the context of an atlas on Orthoptera in Belgium and the creation of regional red lists for grasshoppers and crickets in Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Capital Region.
Quality Control: Data are first validated by experts; only the validated records are published.
Purpose: The dataset was developed to create the red lists of Orthoptera in Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Capital Region. Further the data was used to create an atlas of Orthoptera in Belgium.
The publication of this dataset was supported by the INBO as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.