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

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

Project Summary

Fossil insects provide a unique deep-time record of ecological and evolutionary response to past environmental changes and therefore are invaluable for understanding the impacts of climate change on the current biodiversity crisis. Given current models of future climate change and the important role that insects play in human society (biodiversity, pests, pollination, vectors of disease) the ability to access these data and make predictions about future insect populations becomes even more urgent. The Fossil Insect Collaborative will make available all the major collections of fossil insect specimens in the United States by creating electronic specimen records consisting of digital images and associated collection data.

The digitized fossil insect collections will be made broadly accessible to the research community, K-16 education, government and industry, the general public, and the media through the project website and a central site integrating all the paleobiological Thematic Collections Networks called iDigPaleo. Mobile apps and activities that allow a wide variety of users to experience and interact directly with the collections data will be developed. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (https://www.idigbio.org).

Current Research

The fossil insect data are of great importance to understanding insect response to environmental change and patterns of biodiversity through time
These fossils can aid in phylogenetic reconstruction, examinations of the evolution of morphological characteristics and in studies of overall patterns of diversification in deep time.

Project Leadership

Project Sponsor: University of Colorado at Boulder

Principal Investigators (PIs): Dena Smith (PI), Talia Karim (Co-PI)

Collaboratoring Award PIs: Sam Heads, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; David Grimaldi, American Museum of Natural History; Alton Dooley, Virginia Museum of Natural History; Michael Engel, University of Kansas; Brian Farrell, Harvard University; Susan Butts & Christopher Norris, Yale University; Diane Erwin, University of California, Berkeley;

NSF Award Number

1305066

Project Website

http://fossilinsects.colorado.edu/

Collaborators Map

https://www.idigbio.org/content/digitization-tcn-fossil-insect-collaborative-collaborator-map

Project Collaborators

American Museum Natural History
Harvard University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Natural History Survey
University of Kansas, Center for Research
Virginia Museum of Natural History
Yale University - Peabody Museum
University of California Museum of Paleontology

Unfunded participants:
National Museum of Natural History
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument

TCN related presentations

iDigBio Summit IV FIC TCN Lightning Talk[1]

iDigPaleo Teacher Workshop at Yale

Eight middle school and high school teachers joined FIC PIs and educators at the Yale Peabody Museum on July 20 and 21, 2015 to work with the iDigPaleo database/web page and develop curricula using iDigPaleo in the classroom.

Presentations (recorded):
coming soon

Presentations: (Powerpoint)
coming soon

Amber Preparation Workshop

Details coming soon!