Bishop Museum

(Vanessa tameamea , the Kamehameha butterfly; Hawaii's state insect)

About the Arthropod Checklist

This checklist is a further refinement of previous versions incorporating many corrections and also additions since the publication of the second edition in July 1994. Over 300 references including citations on the arthropods of the Hawaiian Islands have been published since 1993, many influencing the names of Hawaiian arthropods. Over 350 new species have been described and added to the Hawaiian fauna in that time period also. Owing to continuing surveys and monitoring work, many new alien species have also been recorded and added to the faunal list. Freshwater crustaceans have also been added to this version.

The checklist provides an authority file of non-marine arthropod names for the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian Islands are used in the broadest sense, extending from Kure Island in the northwest to Hawaii Island in the southeast. Information in the checklist is based on literature references with the names reviewed by specialists in their area of expertise. The checklist is extracted from a species citation database of over 100,000 records that is continually updated as corrections are noted and/or new information is published or becomes available. Only published information on Hawaiian arthropods is included herein. Only data at hand prior to 31 October 1997 are incorporated. Publication is defined here as printed output from any organization including informally published works (e.g., some newsletters are included as sources). In cases of disputes over names, the last published major revision is used as the standard.

The organization of this checklist is by class. The orders, families, genera, and species are organized alphabetically within each class heading. No distinction is made between subspecies, race, or variety so all infraspecific epithets have been treated as subspecies. Author(s) of the species name and year of publication appear after the scientific name; those enclosed in parentheses have had their generic placement changed since the original description. Some specific names are not known (published for example as "sp.") and so the first author to refer to that particular combination followed by year of publication is placed in square brackets after the name.

The terms used for residency status include endemic (found only in the Hawaiian Islands), indigenous (natural distribution includes, but not restricted to, the Hawaiian Islands), adventive (immigrant: used in place of "introduced" to differentiate from those purposely introduced). A few species may be included as "dub" for dubious residency. If the residency status is not known, a "?" appears in the column. Species known only from quarantine records or those published as not established are present in the database, but do not appear in this published version.

The northwestern atolls are lumped together. Occasionally the non-specific term Hawaiian Islands occurs. In this case, the presence of the species is published, but the island was not specified.

Care should be taken as some species may no longer be present in Hawaii. As this checklist is compiled primarily from the literature, possible extinctions may have occurred for some taxa and many alien species may have been extirpated or were never established.

Though the information contained herein is as correct as we can provide, some errors may still be incorporated owing to lack of complete information or misinterpretation of available information. If any errors are detected, we would appreciate being contacted for correction in a future release of the Checklist. The email address of the editor is: gordo@bishopmuseum.org.

This checklist is a part of a suite of databases being developed by the Hawaii Biological Survey (HBS) to help facilitate research on the Hawaiian fauna by making available basic information on biological elements. Still in progress is a citations database that will include citations to arthropod references updated to current taxonomic standards as far as is known. Presently available on the Bishop Museum world wide web site are authority files (checklists) for virtually all plants and animals in the Hawaiian Islands and bibliographies for most of those groups. The HBS web pages are constantly being updated as new and better information becomes available, improved as better delivery methods and techniques develop, and augmented as data becomes available from other HBS databases. The Entomology home page is:

http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/ento/ento.html.

The Hawaii Biological Survey home page is at:

http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/hbs1.html.

The Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey (previously National Biological Service) funded the computerization of specimen data for candidate species of Hawaiian endangered or threatened arthropods (now considered species of concern by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). The specimen data for these species is available through either the Entomology or HBS web sites. For these species, literature references also are added to the web databases and for some species, images and distribution maps are included.

Acknowledgements:

This work was partly supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge their support. A portion of the work was completed with support from the National Biological Service (now Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Service) to whom we are also indebted.

Thanks to the staffs at Bishop Museum Library, Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association Library, the University of Hawaii Hamilton and Sinclair Libraries, and the Biological Sciences, Bancroft and Main libraries at the University of California, Berkeley. I am also indebted to the staff in the Department of Natural Sciences, Bishop Museum for support, both editorial and informational. A special thank you to the many sharp-eyed professionals who have contributed corrections over the years since the publication of the first checklist in 1992.

Bishop Museum Home Page

BISHOP MUSEUM
The State Museum of Natural and Cultural History
For Museum Information, call (808) 847-3511