Thematic Collections Networks
Each Thematic Collections Network (TCN) is a network of institutions with a strategy for digitizing information that addresses a particular research theme, such as impacts of climate change or biota of a region. Once digitized, data are easily accessed and available for other research and educational use. Other institutions and collections may join an existing TCN as a Partner to Existing Network (PEN). The following are the TCNs, and any associated PENs, currently funded by the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections [1] (ADBC) program:
Award Year 2022
- (TCN) Collaborative Research: Digitization and Enrichment of U.S. Herbarium Data from Tropical Africa to Enable Urgent Quantitative Conservation Assessments [2]
- (TCN) TCN: iDigBees Network, Towards Complete Digitization of US Bee Collections to Promote Ecological and Evolutionary Research in a Keystone Clade [3]
Award Year 2021
- (TCN) Collaborative Research: Bringing Asia to digital life: mobilizing underrepresented Asian herbarium collections in the US to propel biodiversity discovery [4]
- (TCN) TCN: Extending Anthophila research through image and trait digitization (Big-Bee) [5]: BigBee
Award Year 2020
- (TCN) Building a global consortium of bryophytes and lichens: keystones of cryptobiotic communities [6]
- (TCN) Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard [7] (ESB)
- (TCN) Documenting Marine Biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate Collections [9] (DigIn)
Award Year 2019
- (TCN) Digitizing collections to trace parasite-host associations and predict the spread of vector-borne disease [10] (TPT)
- (TCN) American Crossroads: Digitizing the Vascular Flora of the South-Central United States [13] (TORCH)
- (TCN) Enhancing Access to Taxonomic and Biogeographical Data to Stem the Tide of Extinction of the Highly Imperiled Pacific Island Land Snails [14] (PILSBRY)
Award Year 2018
- (TCN) Capturing California's Flowers: Using Digital Images to Investigate Phenological Change in a Biodiversity Hotspot [15] (CAP)
- (PEN) 2020 Expanding and enhancing the California Phenology TCN [16]
- (TCN) The Pteridological Collections Consortium: An Integrative Approach to Pteridophyte Diversity Over the Last 420 Million Years [17] (PCC)
- (TCN) Digitizing "Endless Forms": Facilitating Research on Imperiled Plants with Extreme Morphologies [18] (Endless Forms)
Award Year 2017:
- (TCN) Using Herbarium Data to Document Plant Niches in the High Peaks and High Plains of the Southern Rockies - Past, Present, and Future [20] (SoRo)
- (TCN) oVert: Open Exploration of Vertebrate Diversity in 3D [22] (oVert)
Award Year 2016:
- (TCN) The Cretaceous World: Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems in the Western Interior Seaway [27] (Cretaceous World)
- (TCN) Lepidoptera of North America Network: Documenting Diversity in the Largest Clade of Herbivores [30] (LepNet)
- (TCN) The Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis: Achieving a greater scientific understanding of our urban world [34] (MAM)
Award Year 2015 [37]:
- (TCN) The Microfungi Collections Consortium: A Networked Approach to Digitizing Small Fungi with Large Impacts on the Function and Health of Ecosystems [38] (MiCC)
- (TCN) Documenting Fossil Marine Invertebrate Communities of the Eastern Pacific - Faunal Responses to Environmental Change over the last 66 million years [39] (EPICC)
Award Year 2014 [42]:
- (TCN) Documenting the Occurrence through Space and Time of Aquatic Non-indigenous Fish, Mollusks, Algae, and Plants Threatening North America's Great Lakes [43] (GLI)
- (TCN) InvertEBase: Reaching Back to See the Future: Species-rich Invertebrate Faunas Document Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Shifts [44] (InvertEBase)
- (PEN) 2016 Augmenting the temporal and geographic range of InvertEBase through additional collaboration of the Chicago Academy of Sciences [45]
- (PEN) 2018 Mollusca and Arthropoda Biodiversity in the Colorado Plateau Region [45]
- (PEN) 2020 Invertebrates from the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains: University of Colorado Museum of Natural History expands taxonomic and geographic coverage of InvertEBase [45]
- (TCN) The Key to the Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot [46] (SERNEC)
- (PEN) 2017 Integrating the herbaria of peninsular Florida, a biodiversity hotspot of endemism, rarity, and richness [47]
- (PEN) 2018 Filling in Knowledge Gaps with Key Herbaria for Understanding Vascular Plant Diversity in the Atlantic Coastal Plain [48]
- (PEN) 2020 Integrating the unique collections of southern Illinois at SIU to improve coverage of the Southeastern US Flora in SERNEC [47]
Award Year 2013 [49]:
- (TCN) Fossil Insect Collaborative: A Deep-Time Approach to Studying Diversification and Response to Environmental Change [50] (FIC)
- (TCN) Developing a Centralized Digital Archive of Vouchered Animal Communication Signals [52] (VACS)
- (TCN) The Macroalgal Herbarium Consortium: Accessing 150 Years of Specimen Data to Understand Changes in the Marine/Aquatic Environment [53] (MHC)
Award Year 2012 [54]:
- (TCN) Mobilizing New England Vascular Plant Specimen Data to Track Environmental Change [55] (NEVP)
- (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the New England Vascular Plant Network for the University of Maine Herbarium [56]
- (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the Existing New England Vascular Plant Network for Collections at the New York Botanical Garden [56]
- (PEN) 2020 Partnership to the New England Vascular Plant Network (NEVP) for the Environmental Management and Monitoring Alliance (EMMA) [56]
- (TCN) Digitizing Fossils to Enable New Syntheses in Biogeography- Creating a PALEONICHES [57] (Paleoniches)
- (TCN) The Macrofungi Collection Consortium: Unlocking a Biodiversity Resource for Understanding Biotic Interactions, Nutrient Cycling and Human Affairs [59] (MaCC)
- (TCN) Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN): A Model for Collections Digitization to Promote Taxonomic and Ecological Research [61]
- (PEN) 2013 Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN [62]
- (PEN) 2014 Ground-dwelling Insects in the Brigham Young University Collection, Enhancement to SCAN [62]
- (PEN) 2015 Integration of data from the Triplehorn Insect Collection with the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network [62]
- (PEN) 2016 The addition of OrthopNet to SCAN [62]
- (PEN) 2017 Incorporation of a Massive New World Invertebrate Collection at the University of Texas at El Paso [62]
- (PEN) 2018 Field Museum of Natural History Partnership with the Southwest Collection of Arthropods Network [63]
- (PEN) 2020 Contribution of Digital Data from Ground-dwelling Orthopteroid Orders at American Museum of Natural History to the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network [62]
Award Year 2011 [64]:
- (TCN) InvertNet: An Integrative Platform for Research on Environmental Change, Species Discovery and Identification [65]
- (TCN) Plants, Herbivores and Parasitoids: A Model System for the Study of Tri-Trophic Associations [67] (TTD)
- (TCN) North American Lichens and Bryophytes: Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change [68] (LBCC)
- (PEN) 2012 Digitization of North American Bryophyte and Lichen Specimens from Florida Herbaria [69]
- (PEN) 2012 Addressing Colorado Lichens and Bryophytes as Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change [69]
- (PEN) 2013 Digitization of Two Important Medium-sized Collections to Join the North American Bryophytes and Lichens TCN [69]
- (PEN) 2014 Digitization of North American Bryophyte and Lichen Specimens from Two Ohio Herbaria at the University of Cincinnati [69] (CINC)