Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN): Difference between revisions

 
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<b>Unfunded participants</b>:<br>
<b>Unfunded participants</b>:<br>
Broward College<br>
Broward College (BROW)<br>
Denver Botanic Gardens Collection of Arthropods (DBG)<br>
Denver Botanic Gardens Collection of Arthropods (DBG)<br>
Drexel University, Academy of Natural Sciences (PH)<br>
Drexel University, Academy of Natural Sciences (PH)<br>
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=== Publications ===
=== Publications ===


 
# Cushing, P. E., Channiago, F., & Brookhart, J. O. (2018). Revision of the camel spider genus ''Eremocosta Roewer'' and a description of the female ''Eremocosta gigas Roewer'' (Arachnida, Solifugae). ''Zootaxa'', ''4402''(3), 443-466.
# Zhang, G., Basharat, U., Matzke, N., & Franz, N. M. (2017). Model selection in statistical historical biogeography of Neotropical insects—The Exophthalmus genus complex (Curculionidae: Entiminae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 109, 226-239.
# Zhang, G., Basharat, U., Matzke, N., & Franz, N. M. (2017). Model selection in statistical historical biogeography of Neotropical insects—The Exophthalmus genus complex (Curculionidae: Entiminae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 109, 226-239.
# Meyer, Wallace M., Jeffrey A. Eble, Kimberly Franklin, Reilly B. McManus, Sandra L. Brantley, Jeff Henkel, Paul E Marek, et al. “Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Communities of a Sky Island Mountain Range in Southeastern Arizona, USA: Obtaining a Baseline for Assessing the Effects of Climate Change.” PloS One 10, no. 9 (January 2, 2015): e0135210. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135210 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135210].<br>
# Meyer, Wallace M., Jeffrey A. Eble, Kimberly Franklin, Reilly B. McManus, Sandra L. Brantley, Jeff Henkel, Paul E Marek, et al. “Ground-Dwelling Arthropod Communities of a Sky Island Mountain Range in Southeastern Arizona, USA: Obtaining a Baseline for Assessing the Effects of Climate Change.” PloS One 10, no. 9 (January 2, 2015): e0135210. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135210 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135210].<br>
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== PENs ==
== PENs ==
=== Digitization PEN: Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN ===
=== Digitization PEN: Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN ===
An award is made to complement the Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) Thematic Collection Network (TCN). SCAN is a collaborative of museums that pool their resources and digitize information for all their specimens of ground-dwelling insects and close relatives. The Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard will partner with SCAN and contribute world-renowned expertise in the identification and digitization of ants. Digital records of the some 90,000 specimens of ants from the American Southwest, including the type specimens (individual ants from which species have been described), will be imaged, digitized and made available on line. The project will be of value both to scientists studying biodiversity and the responses of ant species to climate change in the Southwest, and to non-scientists seeking to identify their species.  
An award is made to complement the Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) Thematic Collection Network (TCN). SCAN is a collaborative of museums that pool their resources and digitize information for all their specimens of ground-dwelling insects and close relatives. The Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard will partner with SCAN and contribute world-renowned expertise in the identification and digitization of ants. Digital records of the some 90,000 specimens of ants from the American Southwest, including the type specimens (individual ants from which species have been described), will be imaged, digitized and made available on line. The project will be of value both to scientists studying biodiversity and the responses of ant species to climate change in the Southwest, and to non-scientists seeking to identify their species.  


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Michael Whiting (Co-PI)
Michael Whiting (Co-PI)


=== Digitization PEN: Integration of data from the Triplehorn Insect Collection with the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network ===
=== Digitization PEN: Integration of Data from the Triplehorn Insect Collection with the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network ===


This project will capture and disseminate data on the geographic distribution, species diversity, and life history for two important indicator groups of animals: the darkling beetles and ground beetles. These data will be acquired from collections made over the past 70 years from Texas to southern California by faculty and staff of the Ohio State University. Information will be transcribed from the individual labels on 80 thousand specimens and uploaded into publicly accessible databases. The project is a partnership with an existing project, the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN), and will more than double the available data for these targeted groups of beetles.
This project will capture and disseminate data on the geographic distribution, species diversity, and life history for two important indicator groups of animals: the darkling beetles and ground beetles. These data will be acquired from collections made over the past 70 years from Texas to southern California by faculty and staff of the Ohio State University. Information will be transcribed from the individual labels on 80 thousand specimens and uploaded into publicly accessible databases. The project is a partnership with an existing project, the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN), and will more than double the available data for these targeted groups of beetles.
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[https://twitter.com/baeus2 @baeus2] <br>
[https://twitter.com/baeus2 @baeus2] <br>
[https://twitter.com/osuc_curator @osuc_curator]
[https://twitter.com/osuc_curator @osuc_curator]
=== Digitization PEN: The addition of OrthopNet to SCAN ===
 
=== Digitization PEN: The Addition of OrthopNet to SCAN ===
 
The insect collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University holds one of the world's most important collections of grasshoppers. The Academy proposes to digitize and make accessible information associated with approximately 54,000 of its grasshopper specimens from the southwestern United States. These data will benefit the general public and research scientists, as they will facilitate the understanding of grasshopper distribution, the identification of pest species and species new to science, and contribute to understanding how species respond to environmental change. Field notebooks documenting geographic and associated species information will be scanned and made available on the World Wide Web. The notebooks are important beyond the specimen information they contain. They include observations from the early 20th century regarding vegetation, climate, land use, animal communities, native peoples and their life styles. This information potentially informs other disciplines including ecology, history and anthropology. This project establishes a collaborative framework involving Academy researchers, college students, and high school students, including individuals from groups under-represented in STEM, with an interest in the biodiversity sciences.
The insect collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University holds one of the world's most important collections of grasshoppers. The Academy proposes to digitize and make accessible information associated with approximately 54,000 of its grasshopper specimens from the southwestern United States. These data will benefit the general public and research scientists, as they will facilitate the understanding of grasshopper distribution, the identification of pest species and species new to science, and contribute to understanding how species respond to environmental change. Field notebooks documenting geographic and associated species information will be scanned and made available on the World Wide Web. The notebooks are important beyond the specimen information they contain. They include observations from the early 20th century regarding vegetation, climate, land use, animal communities, native peoples and their life styles. This information potentially informs other disciplines including ecology, history and anthropology. This project establishes a collaborative framework involving Academy researchers, college students, and high school students, including individuals from groups under-represented in STEM, with an interest in the biodiversity sciences.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANSP) has partnered with the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) as a Partner to an Existing Network (PEN) to build OrthopNet. The OrthopNet project will capture specimen level data from approximately 54,000 specimens of southwestern Acrididae (grasshoppers) and serve this data to SCAN. These data will aid in understanding grasshopper distributions, identify pest species and species new to science, and inform global biodiversity issues. The Academy of Natural Sciences is the oldest natural history museum in the Americas, founded in 1812. The Academy's Acrididae (grasshopper) collection is one of the best and most comprehensive in the world. The targeted collection was accrued by Academy researchers surveying grasshoppers in the southwestern United States starting in the early 1900s. The Academy's archives also contain field notebooks associated with these southwestern US collecting expeditions. These documents will be imaged following the Smithsonian Libraries Macaw metadata collection protocol, and hosted on the World Wide Web by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Mining these notebooks for additional locality information will aid in georeferencing specimen records, linking field notes and other specimen information, further enhancing the value of the collection. The historical information obtained from the field notebooks will inform other disciplines including ecology, history and anthropology. Funding for Academy researchers, university students, and underserved high school students is also provided. Products generated from the project will be available at http://symbiota4.acis.ufl.edu/scan/portal/.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANSP) has partnered with the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) as a Partner to an Existing Network (PEN) to build OrthopNet. The OrthopNet project will capture specimen level data from approximately 54,000 specimens of southwestern Acrididae (grasshoppers) and serve this data to SCAN. These data will aid in understanding grasshopper distributions, identify pest species and species new to science, and inform global biodiversity issues. The Academy of Natural Sciences is the oldest natural history museum in the Americas, founded in 1812. The Academy's Acrididae (grasshopper) collection is one of the best and most comprehensive in the world. The targeted collection was accrued by Academy researchers surveying grasshoppers in the southwestern United States starting in the early 1900s. The Academy's archives also contain field notebooks associated with these southwestern US collecting expeditions. These documents will be imaged following the Smithsonian Libraries Macaw metadata collection protocol, and hosted on the World Wide Web by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Mining these notebooks for additional locality information will aid in georeferencing specimen records, linking field notes and other specimen information, further enhancing the value of the collection. The historical information obtained from the field notebooks will inform other disciplines including ecology, history and anthropology. Funding for Academy researchers, university students, and underserved high school students is also provided. Products generated from the project will be available at http://symbiota4.acis.ufl.edu/scan/portal/.
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''Twitter'':<br>
''Twitter'':<br>
=== Digitization PEN: Field Museum of Natural History Partnership with the Southwest Collection of Arthropods Network ===
Arthropods play a major role in shaping the ecosystems of the southwestern United States and around the world. Arthropod research collections housed in museums and universities contain key data for studying these roles. Collections data can be used in ecological studies and to produce identification tools, but for many collections these data are hidden away on specimen labels and in field notes. The Southwest Collection of Arthropods Network (SCAN) was established to improve accessibility of collections like these, with a goal to capturing the data written on 750,000 arthropod specimen labels, allowing researchers to explore how arthropods shape the ecosystems of the southwest and how they respond natural and anthropogenic change. This Partner to Existing Networks (PEN) award to the Field Museum will enhance SCAN through the addition of label data from over 100,000 beetle specimens of SCAN target taxa, representing 860 species. Beyond the scientific value of the data will contributed to SCAN, this project will take advantage of the Field Museum's strong history in public outreach and status in the Chicago community to support informal educational opportunities focused on ground-dwelling arthropods both locally and across the globe.
This PEN project will make available the ecological, distributional, and morphological data from four beetle families for which the Field Museum has large, historical holdings: The darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae), the ant loving beetles (Pselaphinae), the feather-wing beetles (Ptiliidae) and the ironclad beetles (Zopheridae). The project will enhance the SCAN dataset by addressing critical taxonomic and distributional gaps. The Field Museum's collection of 60,000 Pselaphinae specimens, a group whose evolutionary history is deeply intertwined the ants (another target taxon), is the most comprehensive and heavily-researched collection of these beetles in the world. It is rich with type specimens (120 primary types), associated field notes, ecological data, and undescribed taxa, yet these data are still not digitally available. The project team will implement a workflow that involves 1) imaging and transcribing data from all labels on 100,000 selected specimens and adding the data added to the Field Museum's EMu database, 2) imaging all North American primary types for target taxa, 3) georeferencing all southwestern collection localities in the Field Museum Insect Collection database, 4) making these data available through the SCAN portal, GBIF, and iDigBio (idigbio.org) data portals, and 5) augmenting current digitization workflows at the Field Museum to leverage the intern and volunteer contributions and sustain digitization through establishment of a highly trained team of digitization volunteers and interns.
''Project Sponsor'': Field Museum of Natural History [http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1802353 (NSF Award 1802353)]
''Principal Investigator (PI):'' [mailto:cmaier@fieldmuseum.org Crystal Maier] (PI)
=== Contribution of Digital Data from Ground-dwelling Orthopteroid Orders at American Museum of Natural History to the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network ===
Our Earth is a dynamic, ever-changing planet of interacting species ranging from microscopic viruses and bacteria to hundred-ton whales. Just about all life on Earth exists due to intricate interactions that produce or allow for the production of food, medicine, shelter, fiber, fuel through pollination, decomposition, nutrient cycling and more. The cascading consequences of ecosystem shifts on these interactions and products can be understood by examining species distribution and diversity, as well as physical variation within and among species across a geographic range, in relation to environmental factors. Natural history collections hold such information and are a record of what happened yesterday to millions of years ago. These research collections can reveal putative reasons for past events, from which predictions about the future direction ecosystems may take and preparations for potentially volatile outcomes can be made. However, the details in these collections, some dating back 150 years or more, are often recorded on a minute slip of paper tied to a wing, tucked in the grooves of a bone or pierced with a pin underneath a collected insect. To unlock the secrets of the past for the benefit of the future, taxonomic, locality, time, and associated environmental condition collection information must be transcribed into digital form to be available for analysis.
The Symbiota Collection of Arthropods Network Thematic Collection Network (SCAN TCN) has digitized specimens of select ground-dwelling insects collected from the southwestern U.S. and Mexico from 16 U.S. institutions. As a Partner to the Existing Network (PEN), the Division of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) of the American Museum of Natural History will contribute data from 53,800 ground-dwelling roach (?Blattaria?), earwig (Dermaptera), cricket and grasshopper (Orthoptera) specimens representing ca. 310 species in the AMNH collection. Tools such as automated image cropping and optical character recognition and help of volunteer citizen scientists are integral to this effort, an often slow and tedious process for old, handwritten labels no larger than a centimeter. The result will be a more complete and robust understanding of species diversity and representation of current and past ecosystems and the impact of natural and anthropogenic activities. Localities will be georeferenced so specimens can be mapped in space and time, species distributions can be refined and models of distributional, ecological and diversity changes can be improved. High resolution images of exemplar males, females, alternative morphs, and AMNH holotypes for target species will aid in species identification and comparison. Additional images of earwig cerci (hind pincers) and expanded grasshopper hindwings will be available for data visualization projects. Data and images will be shared with the greater scientific community and public through AMNH?s portal, as well as with GIBF.org, iDigBio.org and SCAN.
''Project Sponsor'': [https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2001323 American Museum of Natural History (NSF Award #2001323)]
''Principal Investigators'': [mailto:cjohnson@amnh.org Christine Johnson] (PI)
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