Entomology Society of America (ESA) 2017: Difference between revisions

With potentially 3-4 billion museum specimens available globally and perhaps 1-2 billion in the US, the world’s natural history collections offer huge treasure troves of ecologically relevant information. Until recently, this information was locked away in museum cabinets and unavailable for most scientific inquiry. In the last decade, the exponential growth of a number of biodiversity databases has made an unprecedented amount of information available to researchers around the world. With over 95 million specimen records available online to date, and an ever-increasing number captured by collections and by citizen scientists, these data provide excellent information on species distributions, phenology, morphology, and more. Biodiversity data can help not only in the documentation of new species, but also to detect when key species are going extinct, predict distribution of economically and medically important ones, as well as how they can change over time. It is important to ensure the future of these resources by raising awareness of the many projects and research that rely on the information made available thanks to them. In this symposium, we have invited and encourage submissions by researchers and educators that have been using biodiversity data in their projects. Our speakers talks cover topics of interest to P-IE, SysEB, PBT, and MUVE sections of ESA. We also want to encourage the exchange of ideas, taking advantage of the opportunity to host a panel after the presentations. This dialog will include discussion of cyber-infrastructure needs, promote development of tools and hopefully inspire more researchers to explore the wealth and potential of data in digitized natural history collections.