Developing a database of Australian grasshopper occurrences from historic field survey notebooks spanning 54 years (Orthoptera: Acrididae, Morabidae, Pyrgomorphidae, Tetrigidae)

The baseline distribution data for all species of a given group in a region can provide fundamental insights into biogeographic questions about historic patterns of species richness, population trends, and extinction. Grasshoppers are one major group of insects for which a continent-wide perspective on their geographic distribution can be obtained. This is because they were extensively surveyed in Australia for 54 years (1936-1989) as part of Commonwealth expeditions to obtain specimens for the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC). Field notebooks recorded from those surveys, under the direction of ANIC curator and director K. H. L. Key, form the principal source of historic distribution records for grasshoppers in Australia. We digitized all 223 notebooks (2486 pages) and transcribed all the field trips conducted in Western Australia (WA) and Tasmania (47 notebooks, 590 pages). We then carefully geocoded all sampling sites of the transcribed notebooks, following the odometer re..., See the relevant article on methods of data collection. Article link: https://doi.org/10.1111/aen.12628, Files are saved in .csv format. Therefore, these files can be opened in relevant open-source software such as R, Python, Matlab, etc. See, README_Dataset_HistoricGrasshopperSurveysAustralia_v0.1.0 file for detail information on how to use the data.