Saltabel - Orthoptera in Belgium

Occurrence
Latest version published by Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) on Oct 13, 2025 Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
Home:
http://www.saltabel.org
Publication date:
October 13, 2025
License:
CC0 1.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 46,830 records in English (1 MB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file download in English (37 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (18 KB)

Description

The Saltabel dataset deals with grasshopper and cricket occurrences in Belgium. The data are largely gathered by volunteer naturalists, who also reviewed and digitised data from existing museum and university collections in Belgium. Input in a database, feedback to observers, validation and database maintenance were cared for by a professional employee at the Institute for Nature Conservation (IN). The Saltabel (Salta < Saltatoria; bel > Belgium) working group was established in 1989. The purpose of this project was mainly to collect information about the distribution, faunistics and ecology of grasshoppers and crickets in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. The working group produced a newsletter which appeared irregularly in the period 1989-2002 with the intention to inform observers about latest findings, interesting observations, ecological research etc., provide feedback to naturalists and to raise awareness about the conservation value of Orthoptera in general. During this periode, the working group was most active and organised annual weekends, in turn organized in Belgium, the Netherlands and sometimes also northern France . These weekends were intended to perform inventories for badly prospected regions and to stimulate knowledge exchange between collaborators. In 1997, a standard work on the grasshoppers and crickets of The Netherlands was published using data from this project (Kleukers et al. 1997). In 2000, a provisional atlas and red lists of grasshoppers and crickets in Flanders , Brussels and Wallonia was published (Decleer et al. 2000), providing the first major output of this faunistic project for Belgium. As a consequence, the interest for grasshoppers and crickets in conservation increased, as these insects became important indicators of natural quality and successful nature management. After this milestone, the working group lost some incentive, the network of volunteers was no longer professionally supported and Saltabel became less active. In 2006, a dedicated survey was organised in Brussels Capital Region through the SaltaBru project, greatly increasing the number of records for this region. More recently, Saltabel became a study group of the Flemish NGO Natuurpunt and the working group revived with numerous activities and a growing number of recorders involved (http://www.saltabel.org). Since 2011, the online encoding platform http://www.waarnemingen.be is promoted and used for online reporting of records. Since 2012, the focus of the working group was put on enhancing the knowledge of threatened species in Flanders, with dedicated surveys prospecting historically known locations of e.g. Stenobothrus stigmaticus, Stenobothrus lineatus and Ephippiger ephippiger. The database described here, however, does not contain these recent records. The Netherlands are currently also working on a new atlas through waarneming.nl (http://www.waarneming.nl/sprinkhaanatlas_start.php).To allow anyone to use this dataset, we have released the data to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). We would appreciate however, if you read and follow these norms for data use (http://www.inbo.be/en/norms-for-data-use) and provide a link to the original dataset (https://doi.org/10.15468/1rcpsq) whenever possible. If you use these data for a scientific paper, please cite the dataset following the applicable citation norms and/or consider us for co-authorship. We are always interested to know how you have used or visualized the data, or to provide more information, so please contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata, opendata@inbo.be or https://twitter.com/LifeWatchINBO.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 46,830 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Adriaens T, Decleer K, Devriese H, Lock K, Lambrechts J, San Martin y Gomez G, Piesschaert F, Maes D, Brosens D, Desmet P (2025). Saltabel - Orthoptera in Belgium. Version 5.9. Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). Occurrence dataset. https://doi.org/10.15468/1rcpsq

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 76cc7230-76b6-4763-9caf-22626b29c0a6.  Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Keywords

Occurrence; Orthoptera; grasshoppers; crickets; locusts; distribution; faunistics; Belgium; Walloon Region; Flanders; Brussels Capital Region; Occurrence

Contacts

Tim Adriaens
  • Metadata Provider ●
  • Originator ●
  • Point Of Contact
  • Researcher
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Kris Decleer
  • Originator
  • Researcher
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Hendrik Devriese
  • Originator
Saltabel
BE
Koen Lock
  • Originator
Saltabel
BE
Jorg Lambrechts
  • Originator
Natuurpunt
  • Coxiestraat 11
2800 Mechelen
Antwerp
BE
Gilles San Martin y Gomez
  • Originator
Saltabel, SaltaBru
BE
Frederic Piesschaert
  • Originator
  • Data information manager
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Dirk Maes
  • Originator
  • Researcher
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Dimitri Brosens
  • Metadata Provider ●
  • Originator ●
  • Point Of Contact
  • Data liaison officer
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Peter Desmet
  • Metadata Provider ●
  • Originator
  • Data lab coordinator
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
  • Kliniekstraat 25
1070 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS)
  • Rue Vautier 29
1000 Brussels
Brussels Capital Region
BE

Geographic Coverage

This dataset contains Orthoptera occurrences in Belgium.

Bounding Coordinates South West [49.49, 2.54], North East [51.51, 6.42]

Taxonomic Coverage

This dataset contains occurrences of the order Orthoptera (grasshoppers & crickets), from the families Tettigoniidae, Gryllidae, Gryllotalpidae, Tetrigidae, and Acrididae.

Order Orthoptera (grasshoppers & crickets)
Suborder Ensifera, Caelifera
Family Gryllidae (true crickets), Gryllotalpidae (mole crickets), Tetrigidae (pygmy grasshoppers), Acrididae (short-horned grasshoppers), Tettigoniidae (bush-crickets)
Species Acheta domesticus (Linneaus, 1758), Barbitistes serricauda (Fabricius, 1798), Calliptamus italicus (Linneaus, 1758), Chorthippus albomarginatus (Degeer, 1773), Chorthippus biguttulus (Linneaus, 1758), Chorthippus brunneus (Thunberg, 1815), Chorthippus dorsatus (Zetterstedt, 1821), Chorthippus mollis (Charpentier, 1825), Chorthippus montanus (Charpentier, 1825), Chorthippus parallelus (Zetterstedt, 1821), Chorthippus vagans (Eversmann, 1848), Chrysochraon dispar (Germar, 1835), Conocephalus discolor (Thunberg, 1815), Conocephalus dorsalis (Latreille, 1804), Decticus verrucivorus (Linneaus, 1758), Ephippiger ephippiger (Serville, 1831), Euthystira brachyptera (Ocskay, 1826), Gampsocleis glabra (Herbst, 1786), Gomphocerripus rufus (Linneaus, 1758), Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa (Linneaus, 1758), Gryllus campestris (Linneaus, 1758), Leptophyes punctatissima (Bosc, 1792), Locusta migratoria (Linneaus, 1758), Meconema meridionale (Costa, 1860), Meconema thalassinum (Degeer, 1773), Metrioptera bicolor (Philippi, 1830), Metrioptera brachyptera (Linneaus, 1761), Metrioptera roeselii (Hagenbach, 1822), Myrmeleotettix maculatus (Thunberg, 1815), Nemobius sylvestris (Bosc, 1792), Oecanthus pellucens (Scopoli, 1763), Oedipoda caerulescens (Linneaus, 1758), Oedipoda germanica (Latreille, 1804), Omocestus rufipes (Zetterstedt, 1821), Omocestus viridulus (Linneaus, 1758), Phaneroptera falcata (Poda, 1761), Pholidoptera griseoaptera (Degeer, 1773), Platycleis albopunctata (Goez, 1778), Platycleis tessellata (Charpentier, 1825), Psophus stridulus (Linneaus, 1758), Sphingonotus caerulans (Linneaus, 1767), Stenobothrus lineatus (Panzer, 1796), Stenobothrus stigmaticus (Rambur, 1839), Stethophyma grossum (Linneaus, 1758), Tetrix bipunctata (Linneaus, 1758), Tetrix ceperoi (Bolivar, 1887), Tetrix subulata (Linneaus, 1758), Tetrix tenuicornis (Sahlberg, 1893), Tetrix undulata (Sowerby, 1806), Tettigonia cantans (Fuessly, 1775), Tettigonia viridissima (Linneaus, 1758)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1800-01-01 / 2011-07-11

Sampling Methods

The data mostly comprise loose human observations by volunteer naturalists. Also a significant amount of records originate from net sampling and the intelligent use of bat detectors, and digitized data from existing museum and university collections in Belgium.

Study Extent The data are gathered in the context of an atlas on Orthoptera in Belgium and the creation of regional red lists for grasshoppers and crickets in Flanders, Wallonia, and the Brussels Capital Region.
Quality Control Data are first validated by experts; only the validated records are published.

Method step description:

  1. Observations pertaining to common species which were previously validated to occur in the neighbouring grid cells of 5 x 5 km squares are automatically validated. Observations of species that are considered rare, or common species that have not been recorded in the neighbouring grid cells are subjected to a manual control by experts.

Collection Data

Collection Name RBINS Belgian Orthoptera Collection
Collection Identifier ORTH BEL RBINS
Parent Collection Identifier RBINS
Specimen preservation methods Pinned

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Decleer, K., Devriese, H., Hofmans, K., Lock, K., Barenbrug, B. & Maes D. (2000). Voorlopige atlas en "rode lijst" van de sprinkhanen en krekels van België (Insecta, Orthoptera). Werkgroep Saltabel i.s.m. I.N. en K.B.I.N., Rapport Instituut voor Natuurbehoud 2000/10, Brussel, 76 p. / Atlas et "liste rouge" provisoire des sauterelles, grillons et criquets de Belgique (Insecta, Orthoptera). Groupe de travail Saltabel e.c.a. I.N. et I.R.S.N.B., Rapport Instituut voor Natuurbehoud 2000/10, Bruxelles, 76 p. ISBN 90-403-0119-0

Additional Metadata

Purpose
Alternative Identifiers 76cc7230-76b6-4763-9caf-22626b29c0a6
https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=saltabel-occurrences