TCNs

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 (ADBC) project:

ACTIVE

Award Year 2022

(TCN) TCN: Collaborative Research: Digitization and Enrichment of U.S. Herbarium Data from Tropical Africa to Enable Urgent Quantitative Conservation Assessments

(TCN) TCN: iDigBees Network, Towards Complete Digitization of US Bee Collections to Promote Ecological and Evolutionary Research in a Keystone Clade

Award Year 2021

(TCN) TCN: Collaborative Research: Bringing Asia to digital life: mobilizing underrepresented Asian herbarium collections in the US to propel biodiversity discovery

(TCN) TCN: Extending Anthophila research through image and trait digitization (Big-Bee): BigBee

Award Year 2020

(TCN) Building a global consortium of bryophytes and lichens: keystones of cryptobiotic communities: GLOBAL

(TCN) Mobilizing Millions of Marine Mollusks of the Eastern Seaboard: ESB

• (PEN) 2021 Adding unique molluscan live-dead data from the Paleontological Research Institution to the Eastern Seaboard TCN

(TCN) Documenting Marine Biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate Collections (DigIn): DigIn

Award Year 2019

(TCN) Digitizing collections to trace parasite-host associations and predict the spread of vector-borne disease: TPT

• (PEN) 2020 Addition of the Yale Peabody Museum to the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker (TPT) Network
• (PEN) 2021 Adding a world-class flea collection to the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker network

(TCN) American Crossroads: Digitizing the Vascular Flora of the South-Central United States: TORCH

(TCN) Enhancing Access to Taxonomic and Biogeographical Data to Stem the Tide of Extinction of the Highly Imperiled Pacific Island Land Snails: PILSBRY

Award Year 2018

(TCN) Capturing California's Flowers: Using Digital Images to Investigate Phenological Change in a Biodiversity Hotspot: CAP

• (PEN) 2020 Expanding and enhancing the California Phenology TCN

(TCN) The Pteridological Collections Consortium: An integrative Approach to Pteridophyte Diversity Over the Last 420 Million Years: PCC

(TCN) Digitizing "Endless Forms": Facilitating Research on Imperiled Plants with Extreme Morphologies: Endless Forms

• (PEN) 2020 Augmenting the Endless Forms TCN: digitization of imperiled plants with unique morphological adaptations

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: SoRo

• (PEN) 2019 Enhancing the SoRo TCN with collections of taxonomic, geographic, and historic significance from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Herbarium

(TCN) oVert: Open Exploration of Vertebrate Diversity in 3D: oVert

• (PEN) 2018 oMEGA - Online Metrology of Extant Giant Animals for the oVert TCN
• (PEN) 2019 Functional Quantitative Characters for Ecology and Evolution (FuncQEE)
• (PEN) 2019 The oUTCT PEN: Outwardly Mobilizing the UTCT Vertebrate Archive for Research and Training
• (PEN) 2020 CryptoVert - Digitizing small-bodied cryptobenthic fishes for the oVertTCN
• (PEN) 2020 GalapaGateway: Unlocking Model Evolutionary Systems for Research and Education
• (PEN) 2020 oBird: 3D Photogrammetry of Museum Specimens for Phenomics across the Avian Tree of Life
• (PEN) 2020 oMeso: Opening Mesoamerican Herpetofaunal Diversity to Whole Phenome Imaging
• (PEN) 2021 BatPEN!—A Partnership to Facilitate Scientific Inquiry into the Vast Functional Trait Diversity of Phyllostomid Bats

Award Year 2016

(TCN) The Cretaceous World: Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems in the Western Interior Seaway

• (PEN) 2017 Expanding and Enhancing a TCN Digitizing Fossils to Reconstruct Evolving Ecosystems the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway
• (PEN) 2019 The Cretaceous World: Connecting the Cretaceous Seas of North America

(TCN) Lepidoptera of North America Network: Documenting Diversity in the Largest Clade of Herbivores

• (PEN) 2019 Integration of data from the San Diego Natural History Museum with the Lepidoptera of North America Network
• (PEN) 2020 Enhancing LepNet: Digitization and integration of significant butterfly and moth collections from the upper Midwest Tension Zone region
• (PEN) 2020 Integration of data from the UNH Insect Collection with LepNet.
• (PEN) 2021 Small and Hungry: Enhancing LepNet TCN with microlepidoptera and 50 years of host plant data from the Essig Museum

(TCN) The Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis: Achieving a Greater Scientific Understanding of our Urban World

• (PEN) 2017 Partnering the Penn State Herbarium (PAC) to Contextualize the Mid-Atlantic Megalopolis
• (PEN) 2018 Connecting Rust Belt Dynamics to the Mid-Atlantic Magalopolis Utilizing the Carnegie Museum Herbarium

Award Year 2015

(TCN) The Microfungi Collections Consortium: A Networked Approach to Digitizing Small Fungi with Large Impacts on the Function and Health of Ecosystems

(TCN) Documenting Fossil Marine Invertebrate Communities of the Eastern Pacific - Faunal Responses to Environmental Change over the last 66 million years

• (PEN) 2018 Enhancing the EPICC TCN with Unique, Well-Curated but Poorly Accessible Collections at the University of California - Riverside
• (PEN) 2019 Critical Central and South American additions to the EPICC TCN from the oldest Invertebrate Paleontology collection in the United States

Award Year 2014

(TCN) InvertEBase: Reaching Back to See the Future: Species-rich Invertebrate Faunas Document Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Shifts

• (PEN) 2016 Augmenting the Temporal and Geographic Range of InvertEBase through Additional Collaboration of the Chicago Academy of Sciences
• (PEN) 2018 Mollusca and Arthropoda Biodiversity in the Colorado Plateau Region
• (PEN) 2020 Invertebrates from the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains: University of Colorado Museum of Natural History expands taxonomic and geographic coverage of InvertEBase

(TCN) The Key to the Cabinets: Building and Sustaining a Research Database for a Global Biodiversity Hotspot

• (PEN) 2017 Integrating the Herbaria of Peninsular Florida, a Biodiversity Hotspot of Endemism, Rarity, and Richness
• (PEN) 2018 Filling in Knowledge Gaps with Key Herbaria for Understanding Vascular Plant Diversity in the Atlantic Coastal Plain
• (PEN) 2020 Integrating the unique collections of southern Illinois at SIU to improve coverage of the Southeastern US Flora in SERNEC

Award Year 2013

(TCN) Fossil Insect Collaborative: A Deep-Time Approach to Studying Diversification and Response to Environmental Change

• (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the Fossil Insect Collaborative for Collections at the University of California Museum of Paleontology
• (PEN) 2017 Digitizing the Fossil Insects of LA: Critical Additions to the Fossil Insect Collaborative

Award Year 2012

(TCN) Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN): A Model for Collections Digitization to Promote Taxonomic and Ecological Research

• (PEN) 2013 Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN
• (PEN) 2014 Ground-dwelling Insects in the Brigham Young University Collection, Enhancement to SCAN
• (PEN) 2015 Integration of Data from the Triplehorn Insect Collection with the Southwestern Collections of Arthropods Network
• (PEN) 2016 The Addition of OrthopNet to SCAN
• (PEN) 2017 Incorporation of a Massive New World Invertebrate Collection at the University of Texas at El Paso
• (PEN) 2018 Field Museum of Natural History Partnership with the Southwest Collection of Arthropods Network
• (PEN) 2020 Contribution of Digital Data from Ground-dwelling Orthopteroid Orders at American Museum of Natural History to the Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network

COMPLETED

Award Year 2014

(TCN) Documenting the Occurrence through Space and Time of Aquatic Non-indigenous Fish, Mollusks, Algae, and Plants Threatening North America's Great Lakes

Award Year 2013

(TCN) Developing a Centralized Digital Archive of Vouchered Animal Communication Signals

(TCN) The Macroalgal Herbarium Consortium: Accessing 150 Years of Specimen Data to Understand Changes in the Marine/Aquatic Environment

Award Year 2012

(TCN) Mobilizing New England Vascular Plant Data to Track Environmental Changes

• (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the New England Vascular Plant Network for the University of Maine Herbarium
• (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the Existing New England Vascular Plant Network for Collections at the New York Botanical Garden
• (PEN) 2020 Partnership to the New England Vascular Plant Network (NEVP) for the Environmental Management and Monitoring Alliance (EMMA)

(TCN) The Macrofungi Collection Consortium: Unlocking a Biodiversity for Understanding Biotic Interactions, Nutrient Cycling and Human Affairs

• (PEN) 2014 Partnership to Existing Macrofungi Collection Consortium--Digitization of an Important Regional Collection of Macrofungi at the Pringle Herbarium
• (PEN) 2015 Partnership to the Macrofungi Collection Consortium for the Richard Homola Mycological Herbarium

(TCN) Digitizing Fossils to Enable New Syntheses in Biogeography- Creating a PALEONICHES

• (PEN) 2013 Targeted Digitization to Expand and Enhance the PALEONICHES TCN
• (PEN) 2013 Increasing the Robustness of the Ordovician and Pennsylvanian Dataset of PALEONICHES-TCN
• (PEN) 2017 Paleoniches on the Western Cincinnati Arch, the Ordovician of Indiana

Award Year 2011

(TCN) InvertNet: An Integrative Platform for Research on Environmental Change, Species Discovery and Identification

• (PEN) 2013 Digitizing the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History's Historic Invertebrate Collections through the InvertNet TCN

(TCN) Plants, Herbivores, and Parasitoids: A Model System for the Study of Tri-trophic Associations

(TCN) North American Lichens and Bryophytes - Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change

• (PEN) 2012 Digitization of North American Bryophyte and Lichen Specimens from Florida Herbaria
• (PEN) 2012 Addressing Colorado Lichens and Bryophytes as Sensitive Indicators of Environmental Quality and Change
• (PEN) 2013 Digitization of Two Important Medium-sized Collections to Join the North American Bryophytes and Lichens TCN
• (PEN) 2014 Digitization of North American Bryophyte and Lichen Specimens from Two Ohio Herbaria at the University of Cincinnati (CINC)