A species-level taxonomic catalog of Neotropical freshwater insects: building a consensus reference for occurrence data integration and conservation planning

What this was about

Alejandra Correa-Bedoya presented a Darwin Core-compliant species-level checklist of seven orders of freshwater insects for the Neotropics (southern Mexico to Brazil), compiled over six months for her PhD. She showed that names documented for Colombia (about 1,250 species) often have no occurrence records there, due to taxonomic resolution bias and a data supply gap rather than platform failures, verified names against global infrastructures, and noted her list triples known Odonata species for Colombia compared with a national effort. Grounding it in the free-flowing Samaná Norte river, threatened by planned dams and invasive species, she argued that without species names there are no occurrences, no species distribution models and no evidence for protecting rivers.

Why it matters. It links taxonomic infrastructure directly to conservation decisions under dam development pressure in one of the world's most biodiverse and data-deficient regions.

In the room

• Global freshwater populations declined about 83% since 1970 (Living Planet), about 95% in Latin America and the Caribbean; Central and South America are data-deficient hotspots.
• Dam expansion is concentrated on the Andean slopes, modifying flows before data exist to assess losses.
• The checklist covers seven orders from southern Mexico to Brazil, excluding the southern cone as a distinct biogeographic region; Coleoptera and Diptera are richest.
• It is a taxon-core list (names, synonyms, classification) of officially described species, the naming backbone needed before occurrence data can be resolved.
• Colombia has the most documented species of these orders (about 1,250), reflecting its position among heterogeneous biogeographic subregions.
• Example stonefly: GBIF shows records across its range but none in Colombia at the range centre, indicating nobody has named and looked for it there.
• Verification against GBIF found flags such as recent nomenclatural changes (Coleoptera), typographic/algorithmic errors (Trichoptera) and a genus reassignment (Hemiptera); she frames this as a data supply gap, not a platform problem.

Notable moments