Database of Insects of Subsaharan Africa

One of the most basic needs for inventorying, exploiting and monitoring the changes in the insect diversity of Africa is a complete list of species which are already known to occur in Africa. Surprisingly, such a basic list does not exist, despite some 250 years of formal scientific description of life on earth. The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), along with the National Museum of Natural History, is therefore sponsoring the production of the list. The African list will also be a major contribution toward the proposed list of world species (e.g. the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Species 2000 initiative of DIVERSITAS). A demonstration database is provided for the species of the orders Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), Ephemeroptera (mayflies), Plecoptera (stoneflies), Megaloptera (alderflies), Hemiptera-Heteroptera (true bugs), Homoptera (cicadas, leafhoppers, planthoppers, scales, and others), and Trichoptera (caddisflies).