December. 1958 



Ross: Faunistic Surveys 



139 



set up in hotels at various towns. Each 

 party consisted of three persons. Usually 

 all three collected during the first half- 

 day spent in each locality ; after that one 

 person stayed in the headquarters hotel 

 and mounted aphids while the other two 

 continued collecting. Lists of potential 

 hosts, with especially interesting ones in- 

 dicated, were used as a tick sheet in each 

 locality. About a hundred species, 36 of 

 them new to science, were added to the 

 state list. The report on this project was 

 published in the Bulletin (Hottes & Pri- 

 son 1931). 



Odonata. — X^mphs of this order were 

 frequently encountered in limnological 

 work, and H. Garman and Hart reared 

 many of them during the 1880's and 

 1890's. This work set the stage for the 

 first report on Illinois dragonflies, an ar- 

 ticle by J. G. Xeedham & Hart (1903). 

 Later Philip Garman did much work on 

 the group and wrote an excellent account 

 of the damselflv suborder Zvgoptera in 

 Illinois (P. Garman 1917). ' 



Pentatomoidea. — This group includes 

 the stink bugs, a group of sucking insects 

 for which Hart had a special interest. He 

 assembled a remarkably fine collection of 

 the Illinois species and had virtually com- 

 pleted an account of the state fauna at the 

 time of his death. The manuscript was 

 completed bv J. R. Malloch and was pub- 

 lished in xht Bulletin (Hart 1919). This 

 report was especially useful because it in- 

 cluded not only keys to the Illinois spe- 

 cies but also keys to the Xearctic genera. 



Diptera. — The first serious work on 

 the flies done for the Xatural History 

 Survey or a parent organization was by 

 J. R. Malloch. Although interested in 

 Diptera in general, Malloch specialized 

 in the Chironomidae or midges, of great 

 importance in the economy of Illinois 

 waters. He reared a large number of 

 these insects and was one of the first 

 workers to delve into the minute char- 

 acters of the male genitalia and the larval 

 mouthparts as an aid in species discrimina- 

 tion and identification. His rearings were 

 done chiefly in the vicinity of Havana 

 and Urbana, with a great deal of help 

 from Hart, who also collected adult ma- 

 terial from various parts of Illinois and 

 surrounding states. The report by Mal- 

 loch (1915) on the midges was outstand- 



ing among faunistic works. Xot only did 

 it give equal emphasis to the adults and 

 larvae, a most unusual feature for the 

 time, but it benefited from two remark- 

 able faculties of Malloch's. One was 

 Malloch's ability to spot new characters 

 (dipterists agree that Malloch was a 

 genius at this not only in the midges but 

 in every group in which he worked). 

 The other was his ability to prepare un- 

 usually clear keys, which made his publi- 

 cations quite out of the ordinary in their 

 usefulness to other workers. 



The breadth of Malloch's interest in 

 Diptera was expressed when he published 

 in the Bulletin a classification of the 

 order based primarily on larval and pupal 

 characters (Malloch 1917). This study 

 was one of the first in which recognition 

 was given to the value of characters of 

 the immature stages in determining the 

 relationships of families within a large in- 

 sect order. Certainly it is a classic and 

 contains cogent ideas of fly classification 

 which even at this date have not been 

 fully incorporated into accepted classi- 

 fications of the order. 



The next intensive Xatural History 

 Survey work on Diptera was a study com- 

 menced by H. H. Ross about 1938 on the 

 Illinois mosquitoes. Because of restric- 

 tions on travel and lack of availability of 

 personnel during World War II, field 

 work and rearing progressed at a rela- 

 tively slow rate. The report on these in- 

 sects was published in the Bulletin (Ross 

 1947). 



Plecoptera. — Although the Plecop- 

 tera or stoneflies are an abundant com- 

 ponent of many aquatic communities, no 

 state-wide taxonomic work on the Illinois 

 species was done until Frison became in- 

 terested in them in 1927. Previously 

 Walsh (1863, 1864«) had observed and 

 recorded many of the species occurring in 

 the vicinity of Rock Island. Frison and 

 another entomologist, R. D. Glasgow, 

 loved to hike and picnic, especially in the 

 hilly country along the Salt Fork River 

 south of Oakwood, Illinois. On fall ex- 

 cursions to this locality they noticed that, 

 in some of the very small streams, the 

 smallest of the stonefly nymphs kept in- 

 creasing in size as winter approached. 

 This observation excited Prison's curios- 

 itv and from it arose an abiding interest 



