by Carl Strang
Up to this point I have reported singing insect distributions in the Chicago region at the county level. For instance, here is an Allard’s ground cricket (Allonemobius allardi) and its species distribution by county.
But I have a lot more data than that which I wanted to share. Also, I thought that maybe a finer grained mapping approach might reveal new questions for me to investigate. I had a spreadsheet with a species list for every site I have visited. So, I recently created a series of maps showing the sites where I have found each species over the years. Here is the resulting map for Allard’s ground cricket:

Filled circles indicate sites where I have observed Allard’s ground crickets. Open circles are places I have visited where I haven’t (yet) noted that species.
As you can see, this is a widespread and frequently encountered cricket. The map reveals significant areas with no sites. Some of these are vast empty (from a biodiversity standpoint) agricultural regions, but still I should give them more attention.
One more example for today. The long-spurred meadow katydid (Orchelimum silvaticum) reaches its northern range limit in the Chicago region.
The county-level map showed this, but the site level map makes it even clearer.

The northernmost sites where I have found long-spurred meadow katydids line up impressively at the same latitude.
These two examples simply emphasize conclusions I had drawn previously. Some intriguing questions were raised in other cases, as I will share in upcoming posts.