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I am an entomologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, in the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I assess stream habitats, benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages, chemical water quality, Rusty Patch Bumblebee presence-absence and habitat quality for several different INHS projects. I also serve as Taxonomic Expert On Trichoptera for the Society for Freshwater Science.
Invertebrate animals are critical to the function of (and our description of) natural systems. In particular, information about insects is critical to estimating environmental impacts and environmental health. Since there are many more species of invertebrates than vertebrates, these taxa can provide more information about the ecological health or conservation value of protected areas.
Figure 1 (Robinson et al. 2016 Journal of Insect Conservation)
Inventories of the insects occurring within protected areas can yield discoveries of new species and greatly enhance the current knowledge on the geographic distribution of many (potentially hundreds) species.
Environmental assessments often explore the composition of invertebrate communities. Freshwater mussels are differentially sensitive to different environmental stressors, and have different dispersal ecologies and habitat preferences and conservation statuses. Rapid biological assessment of transportation and construction projects can use mussels, fishes, aquatic insects and other macroinvertebrates, or wetland plants for establishing the quality, integrity and functional value of natural assemblages.
Litholimnephilops yinani Robinson, Parker and Heads 2018, from the Green River Formation of Colorado (Eocene)
Fossils can give us some (limited) information about when and where some groups of insects may have evolved. These historic patterns and processes constrain the potential composition of the assemblages we can observe today. There are many undescribed fossil insects in the INHS collections.
When we consider the distribution of many species at once, patterns may emerge that can direct conservation efforts or explain ecological associations. In this figure, I have modeled caddisfly species distributions across some upper midwestern states. There are clear patterns of increased species richness that coincide with patterns of historical glacial coverage and forest-prairie land cover. I have overlaid the boundaries of federal lands, as a proxy for how well these assemblages are protected by lands in conservation management.
The development of the American tall grass prairie into a region of high production agriculture , along with the accompanying metropolises, has had consequences for the original flora and fauna of the region. One species of particular concern to me is the Rusty-patched bumblebee Bombus affinis, which has experienced large range contractions in the past couple decades. Illinois has several remnant populations and I am working to assess how detection probabilities vary with environmental conditions or among observers, in the effort to improve the conservation and management of bumblebees in Illinois.
Jason_Robinson_2018_no_phone.pdfcurrent CV (iv-2018)
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