December, 1958 



Ross: Faunistic Surveys 



141 



again a large number of species, including 

 about 20 new ones, were added to the 

 state list. Members of the staff served as 

 "guinea pigs" to try out the keys, to point 

 out spots difficult for the uninitiated, and 

 to suggest improvements. IVIohr did his 

 usual excellent job in providing many 

 total views of various species. The report 

 resulting from this project was published 

 in the Bulletin (Knight 1941). 



Ephemeroptera. — The mayflies were 

 early recognized as being one of the most 

 important components of the fresh-water 

 biota of Illinois, but, except for earlv 

 local studies by Walsh (1863, 1864/^), lit- 

 tle was done concerning their systematic^ 

 in this state until about 1925. At that 

 time collections were sent to J. W. Mc- 

 Dunnough at Ottawa, Canada, who iden- 

 tified a considerable amount of material. 

 Collecting and rearing of species in the 

 order were only sporadic until about 

 1937, when B. D. Burks, assigned to the 

 project, began an intensive field program. 



Certain genera of the mayflies proved 

 difficult to rear because the subimagoes 

 seldom survived in cages, and in some 

 species the nymphs did not molt to the 

 subimaginal stage in still water. For these 

 genera Burks worked out a neat con- 

 trivance. He placed fully mature nymphs 

 (which emerge at night) in a pan of 

 water containing a large stone, placed the 

 pan on the floor of a car at nightfall, and 

 had the car driven over a gravel road. The 

 wave action produced in the pan by the 

 rough ride broke the surface film enough 

 so that the nymphs could emerge. As the 

 driver guided the car along the road, 

 Burks sat in the back seat and periodically 

 examined the pan with a flashlight; he 

 captured each subimago as it emerged, 

 put it in a vial for emergence to imago, 

 and associated the cast skin with it. 



The extremely short period of adult 

 emergence of many species frequently 

 necessitated camping out along a stream 

 and keeping an around-the-clock vigil for 

 emergence. During one summer a rear- 

 ing station was established at a fish 

 hatchery along Nippersink Creek, in the 

 extreme northeastern part of the state, 

 which is especially rich in mayfly species. 

 A flash flood inundated the rearing 

 rooms and nearly swept away the sum- 

 mer's material. The material was res- 



cued as the vials were beginning to float 

 out of the window in the shoulder-deep 

 water. 



At first, Burks had difficulty obtain- 

 ing good series of imagoes, although the 

 subimagoes could be collected in quan- 

 tity at lights. Burks found that he could 

 catch great quantities of these sub- 

 imagoes in paper bags, turn them loose 

 in his hotel room, and have them emerge 

 in fine shape, so that any desired number 

 of imagoes could be secured. 



When Burks left the Natural History 

 Survey in 1949, he had completed the 

 mavflv report, which was published in 

 the Bulletin (Burks 1953). 



Gicadellidae. — About 70 vears ago, 

 C. W. Woodworth (1887) published 

 a short treatment of this family, com- 

 prising the leafhoppers, and later Hart 

 and Malloch made extensive collections 

 of these insects, some of which were 

 identified and recorded by W. L. Mc- 

 Atee of the United States Biological 

 Survey (McAtee 1924, 1926). Malloch 

 himself (1921) wrote a short paper on 

 the group. 



In 1934 D. M. DeLong of Ohio 

 State University agreed to tackle the 

 job of working up a more extensive 

 treatment of the leafhoppers of Illinois. 

 A few years prior to 1934, DeLong had 

 begun an investigation of the male 

 genitalia in the leafhoppers and found 

 that, as in a number of other groups, 

 manv of the species previously identified 

 on the basis of external characters were 

 in reality clusters of species which could 

 be separated primarily on the basis of 

 genitalic structures. Both in North 

 America and elsewhere the discovery of 

 these characters had set off a tremendous 

 burst of activity by leafhopper workers 

 to explore these structures. It was in 

 the midst of this burst of effort that the 

 Illinois project was launched. DeLong 

 and other staff members spent almost all 

 of the next three summers crisscrossing 

 Illinois and collecting leafhoppers in 

 the various habitats of the state. During 

 rainy weeks and also during the winter 

 back in Columbus, Ohio, DeLong iden- 

 tified these collections and continued his 

 revisional studies. Various members of 

 the staff made special collections as in- 

 dicated bv new taxonomic discoveries. 



