Freshwater insects comprise 60% of freshwater animal diversity; they are widely used to assess water quality, and they provide prey for numerous freshwater and terrestrial taxa. Our knowledge of the distribution of freshwater insect diversity in the USA is incomplete because we lack comprehensive, standardized data on their distributions and functional traits at the scale of the contiguous United States (CONUS). We fill this knowledge gap by presenting Freshwater insects CONUS: A database of freshwater insect occurrences and traits for the contiguous United States. This database includes 2.05 million occurrence records for 932 genera in the major freshwater insect orders, at 51,044 stream locations sampled between 2001 and 2018 by federal and state biological monitoring programmes. Compared with existing open‐access databases, we tripled the number of occurrence records and locations and added records for 118 genera. We also present life‐history, dispersal, morphological and ecological traits and trait affinities (analogous to fuzzy‐coded traits) for 1,007 stream insect genera, assembled from existing databases, reference books and the primary literature. We nearly doubled the number of traits for 11 trait groups and added traits for 180 genera that were not available from open‐access databases. Our database, Freshwater insects CONUS, facilitates the mapping of freshwater insect taxonomic and functional diversity and, when paired with environmental data, will provide a powerful resource for quantifying how the environment shapes stream insect diversity and taxon‐specific distributions.

中文翻译：

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淡水昆虫 CONUS：美国毗连的淡水昆虫发生和特征数据库

淡水昆虫占淡水动物多样性的 60%；它们被广泛用于评估水质，并为众多淡水和陆地类群提供猎物。我们对美国淡水昆虫多样性分布的了解是不完整的，因为我们缺乏关于它们在美国本土 (CONUS) 规模上的分布和功能特征的全面、标准化的数据。我们通过介绍淡水昆虫 CONUS：美国毗连的淡水昆虫发生和特征数据库来填补这一知识空白. 该数据库包括 2001 年至 2018 年间联邦和州生物监测计划在 51,044 个溪流位置采样的主要淡水昆虫目 932 个属的 205 万条发生记录。与现有的开放存取数据库相比，我们将发生记录和位置的数量增加了两倍，并增加了 118 个属的记录。我们还展示了从现有数据库、参考书和主要文献中收集的 1,007 个溪流昆虫属的生活史、传播、形态和生态特征以及特征亲和性（类似于模糊编码特征）。我们将 11 个性状组的性状数量几乎翻了一番，并增加了 180 个属的性状，这些性状无法从开放存取数据库中获得。我们的数据库，淡水昆虫 CONUS，有助于绘制淡水昆虫分类和功能多样性的地图，并且与环境数据配对时，将为量化环境如何塑造河流昆虫多样性和特定分类分布提供强大的资源。