Iowa's Biological Diversity

Iowa, even in its most pristine condition, never had the biological diversity that is present in the coral reefs or the tropical rain forests. However, we still have some neat stuff. We have already lost a lot of our biological diversity, and are still losing it. A lot of our biological diversity is present in small fragmented “islands”—two or three acres of tall grass prairie, small areas of never drained wetland, short stretches of undamaged waterways, and small patches of timber, where before the invasion of settlers the areas were large.

Many of our species are not “extinct”, but they are “extirpated” (removed from the area that they used to be found). Extirpated is almost as bad as extinct.

The Poweshiek skipper is almost extirpated from Iowa

There is a surprising amount of information about the biological diversity of Iowa. Various lists have been compiled, and a lot of information is available on the internet. For example, there are lists of species for Iowa vascular plants, bryophytes, fungi, lichens, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and several groups of insects. There are lists from some of the neighboring states of other groups—crustaceans and annelids, for example. The lists have varying degrees of accuracy, and sometimes represent different time frames.

Some groups of organisms have almost no information published about them. This can be true for regional or state checklists, and there can be a lack of information in general about the group. I have worked with Iowa's terrestrial snails and have put together a tentative checklist of species, based on a few publications and some searchable databases from museums. As of right now, there is no guide book in print that one can find to identify terrestrial snails with any degree of accuracy.

Much of the work being done (in fact, one could argue most of the work being done) is done by amateurs with no real institutional or financial support. The work is generally high quality but does not continue after that individual is gone. There is a real need in Iowa for more of the work with biological diversity to have some kind of institutional support. This can include support for collections as well as data in general. There is also a need for financial support for the production of guidebooks aimed at the general public about various aspects of Iowa's biological diversity.

Watch this site for more information. Hopefully more can be provided later. Descriptions are provided for some of the groups, as are references for more information.

The Illinois Natural History Survey has published an interesting list, which can be found here:

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/ilspecies/ilsplist.html

This is a list the numbers of species of all the known groups found in Illinois. It can be used to estimate the number of species of the same group that can be found in Iowa, and can be compared with known species lists for the different states.