About

• A. Williams and MJ Hatfield provided significant impetus to get me started in my research, including core ideas, practices, and inspiration, and MJ Hatfield has has been a close colleague, mentor, and friend.
• C. Eiseman has been another close colleague and advisor, as well as a significant inspiration; his self-published leafminers e-book has been a very useful assemblage of information, and he and O. Lonsdale have led efforts to handle and study many specimens, describe them taxonomically, and write up results.
• R. Gagné, T. Harrison, G. Hanley, E. Metzler, D. Matthews, and L. Nastasi have accepted, examined, curated, and/or identified many specimens.
• Photo identification of certain moths was accomplished or assisted by M. Kenne and A. Brees (noctuids) and A. Hunt and M. Sabourin (tortricids).
• With Opostegidae, E. van Nieukerken examined specimens, arranged barcoding, and prepared and shared supportive documentation, and his published work along with that of D. Davis and J. Stonis was of great help in learning about these moths.
• In addition to providing their published works which have been indispensable, R. Gagné (with Cecidomyiidae) and T. Harrison (with micromoths) have also offered much information and assistance via email and/or phone correspondence.
• The Illinois Wildflowers, Missouri Plants, Minnesota Wildflowers, and Vascular Flora of Iowa websites served as essential aids in the botanical side of things.
• With agromyzids I leaned heavily on Spencer and Steyskal's 1986 manual, especially when getting started.
• The BugGuide website has been an important resource, with users V. Belov, J. Carr, B. Zuparko, R. Hill, E. Chapman, and others providing valuable identifications.
• Biodiversity Heritage Library and JSTOR offered free access to a number of important published works by many authors.
• M. Palmer and T. Feldman offered conversation, support, and space over the phone and/or online.
• I also owe a debt of gratitude to my current and past mentors, especially G. Bakko, G. Bauer, B. McLean, W. Jones, and J. McIntyre, for the ways they helped me navigate this path.
• The written works of J. McIntyre and S.H. Buhner helped me stay grounded in my deeper motivations for the project and my insect studies generally, and I eventually began to shift the scope, focus, and methods of my work partly in response to their books.
• Numerous individuals and organizations in charge of land holdings gave permission to collect insects on the lands they owned, managed, or oversaw.
• Family members and friends provided essential tangible and intangible support that greatly facilitated this project in a large variety of ways.

Please feel free to get in touch via iNaturalist (j_vanderlinden).

This is an accessibility statement from J. van der Linden.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey is partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.

Feedback

I welcome your feedback on the accessibility of Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey. Please let me know if you encounter accessibility barriers on Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey:

• iNaturalist @j_vanderlinden

I try to respond to feedback within 2 business days.

Technical specifications

Accessibility of Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

• HTML
• WAI-ARIA
• CSS
• JavaScript

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite my best efforts to ensure accessibility of Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact me if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey:

1. Descriptive content for some insect records: On some pages, the usual written description of an insect may be very brief, it may be replaced by an audio recording of the description, and/or text alternatives for non-text content may be incompletely prepared or absent. This is because, when I prepared the page, I was limited by a physical (bodily) condition that affected my ability to generate text on a computer. Speech-to-text software I sometimes used did not recognize crucial insect-related terms, requiring frequent manual edits that also limited the amount of text I was able to generate. As I am able, I am adding written descriptions and text alternatives to non-text content where they are missing, and attempting to include as much information in as many formats as possible when creating new pages. Please contact me if you encounter an issue.

Assessment approach

J. van der Linden assessed the accessibility of Upper Midwest Stem Insect Survey by the following approaches:

• Self-evaluation

Date

This statement was created on 14 February 2026 using the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.

Over time I’ve intentionally shifted this project to focus mainly on visual and written documentation of living insects, rather than management and exchange of preserved specimens. As a result, I may be unable to fulfill some specimen requests. With this in mind, you may contact me for specimen inquiries. Please be forewarned that in some cases, even if I am able to fulfill your request, it may take some time for me to do so.

Page created: February 12, 2026. Last update: March 5, 2026