Canada as an Environment for Insect Life

Abstract

Two things make it difficult to write an account of Canada in relation to insect life: the vast size and varied nature of the country and the relatively small amount of work that has been done on its insects. Those familiar with the intensely worked biota of Western Europe or even of many parts of the United States will find this description meagre indeed. In general, Canadian environments are known better than the insects that inhabit them. In only a few orders of insects is our knowledge even of species taxonomy reasonably adequate; for all orders our knowledge of geographical distribution in Canada is sketchy or fragmentary and our knowledge of ecological relations almost non-existent. Serious collecting and study of insects has been carried out in only a few centres. The National Collection itself has been developed actively only since 1919, and on a large scale only in the last few years. There is no close network of amateur and professional workers such as exists in better-studied countries. What I have tried to do, therefore, is to give a brief geographic account of the main environmental factors as seen by an entomologist, to give a short outline of the possible history of the fauna, to give examples of the main distributional types, and to provide a tentative classification of entomological regions, with notes on some characteristic insects of each. The main feature that will undoubtedly be impressed on the reader, as it has been impressed on me, is our ignorance and the need for further investigation of the insect fauna.