title: The global EPTO database: Worldwide occurrences of aquatic insects
Creators: name: Grigoropoulou, Afroditi
name: Hamid, Suhaila Ab
name: Acosta, Raúl
name: Akindele, Emmanuel Olusegun
name: Al‐Shami, Salman A.
name: Altermatt, Florian
name: Amatulli, Giuseppe
name: Angeler, David G.
name: Arimoro, Francis O.
name: Aroviita, Jukka
name: Astorga‐Roine, Anna
name: Bastos, Rafael Costa
name: Bonada, Núria
name: Boukas, Nikos
name: Brand, Cecilia
name: Bremerich, Vanessa
name: Bush, Alex
name: Cai, Qinghua
name: Callisto, Marcos
name: Chen, Kai
name: Cruz, Paulo Vilela
name: Dangles, Olivier
name: Death, Russell
name: Deng, Xiling
name: Domínguez, Eduardo
name: Dudgeon, David
name: Eriksen, Tor Erik
name: Faria, Ana Paula J.
name: Feio, Maria João
name: Fernández‐Aláez, Camino
name: Floury, Mathieu
name: García‐Criado, Francisco
name: García‐Girón, Jorge
name: Graf, Wolfram
name: Grönroos, Mira
name: Haase, Peter
name: Hamada, Neusa
name: He, Fengzhi
name: Heino, Jani
name: Holzenthal, Ralph
name: Huttunen, Kaisa‐Leena
name: Jacobsen, Dean
name: Jähnig, Sonja C.
name: Jetz, Walter
name: Johnson, Richard K.
name: Juen, Leandro
name: Kalkman, Vincent
name: Kati, Vassiliki
name: Keke, Unique N.
name: Koroiva, Ricardo
name: Kuemmerlen, Mathias
name: Langhans, Simone Daniela
name: Ligeiro, Raphael
name: Van Looy, Kris
name: Maasri, Alain
name: Marchant, Richard
name: Garcia Marquez, Jaime Ricardo
name: Martins, Renato T.
name: Melo, Adriano S.
name: Metzeling, Leon
name: Miserendino, Maria Laura
name: Moe, S. Jannicke
name: Molineri, Carlos
name: Muotka, Timo
name: Mustonen, Kaisa‐Riikka
name: Mykrä, Heikki
name: Cavalcante Do Nascimento, Jeane Marcelle
name: Valente‐Neto, Francisco
name: Neu, Peter J.
name: Nieto, Carolina
name: Pauls, Steffen U.
name: Paulson, Dennis R.
name: Rios‐Touma, Blanca
name: Rodrigues, Marciel Elio
name: Oliveira Roque, Fabio De
name: Salazar Salina, Juan Carlos
name: Schmera, Dénes
name: Schmidt‐Kloiber, Astrid
name: Shah, Deep Narayan
name: Simaika, John P.
name: Siqueira, Tadeu
name: Tachamo‐Shah, Ram Devi
name: Theischinger, Günther
name: Thompson, Ross
name: Tonkin, Jonathan D.
name: Torres‐Cambas, Yusdiel
name: Townsend, Colin
name: Turak, Eren
name: Twardochleb, Laura
name: Wang, Beixin
name: Yanygina, Liubov
name: Zamora‐Muñoz, Carmen
name: Domisch, Sami
Publisher: name: Freie Universität Berlin
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: aquatic insects
subject: biodiversity
subject: Ephemeroptera
subject: freshwater ecosystems
subject: global dataset
subject: observation records
subject: Odonata
subject: Plecoptera
subject: species distributions
subject: Trichoptera
classificationCode: 570
subject: Biowissenschaften; Biologie

description: Motivation Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macroecological studies and applied freshwater research is missing. We aim to fill this gap and present the Global EPTO Database, which includes worldwide geo‐referenced aquatic insect occurrence records for four major taxa groups: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata (EPTO). Main type of variables contained A total of 8,368,467 occurrence records globally, of which 8,319,689 (99%) are publicly available. The records are attributed to the corresponding drainage basin and sub‐catchment based on the Hydrography90m dataset and are accompanied by the elevation value, the freshwater ecoregion and the protection status of their location. Spatial location and grain The database covers the global extent, with 86% of the observation records having coordinates with at least four decimal digits (11.1 m precision at the equator) in the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) coordinate reference system. Time period and grain Sampling years span from 1951 to 2021. Ninety‐nine percent of the records have information on the year of the observation, 95% on the year and month, while 94% have a complete date. In the case of seven sub‐datasets, exact dates can be retrieved upon communication with the data contributors. Major taxa and level of measurement Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera and Odonata, standardized at the genus taxonomic level. We provide species names for 7,727,980 (93%) records without further taxonomic verification. Software format The entire tab‐separated value (.csv) database can be downloaded and visualized at https://glowabio.org/project/epto_database/. Fifty individual datasets are also available at https://fred.igb‐berlin.de, while six datasets have restricted access. For the latter, we share metadata and the contact details of the authors.