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Woodlice are key organisms for nutrient cycling in many terrestrial ecosystems; however, knowledge on this invertebrate group is limited as for other soil fauna taxa. Here, we present an annotated checklist of the woodlice of Belgium, a small but densely populated country in Western Europe. We reviewed all 142 publications on Belgian woodlice, the oldest dating back to 1831 and re-identified all doubtful specimens from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) collection. These data is complemented with observations from extensive field surveys dating from March 2014 until December 2017. We report 36 species of woodlice with free-living populations for Belgium. Nine species can be added compared to the latest checklist published in 2000 being Hyloniscusriparius (C. Koch, 1838), Miktoniscuspatiencei Vandel, 1946, Trichoniscoidessarsi Patience, 1908, Haplophthalmusmontivagus Verhoeff, 1941, Porcelliomonticola Lereboullet, 1853, Metatrichoniscoidesleydigii (Weber, 1880), Trichoniscusalemannicus Verhoeff, 1917, Elumacaelata (Miers, 1877) and Philosciaaffinis Verhoeff, 1908. Two species are deleted from the checklist (Ligidiumgermanicum Verhoeff, 1901 and Armadillidiumdepressum Brandt, 1833) because records are doubtful and no material has been preserved. Additionally the data of the field surveys is used to determine a species status of occurrence in Belgium. For each species, a short overview of their first records is provided and their confirmation as part of the Belgian fauna, their current status, as well as a complete bibliography of the species in Belgium.

This data paper describes a recent and spatially complete inventory of the terrestrial isopods of Belgium between 2011 and 2020. During these 10 years every 10 × 10 km² cell of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid in Belgium (373 grid cells) was visited in search for terrestrial isopods. Inventories covered different habitat types in every grid cell such as forest, wetlands or stream sides, and urban areas. Most of the dataset records were obtained by hand-collection methods such as turning stones and dead wood, or by sieving litter and through casual observations. These inventories were carried out by specialists from Spinicornis, the Belgian Terrestrial Isopod Group. Their data is complemented with pitfall trap data from scientific projects and verified citizen science data collected via waarnemingen.be and observations.be from the same time period. This resulted in 19,406 dataset records of 35 terrestrial isopod species. All dataset records are georeferenced using the centroid of their respective 5 × 5 km² UTM grid cell. The dataset is published as open data and available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Direct link to the dataset: https://doi.org/10.15468/mw9c66.

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