Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN)

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

SCAN TCN
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Project Summary
Current Research
Project Websites
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Publications
PENs

Project Summary

The Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) brings together 10 diverse arthropod collections at universities and museums throughout the Southwest to create a virtual network of ground dwelling arthropods which are notably responsive to temporal and spatial environmental changes. These 10 collections document much of the Southwest's biodiversity, but currently the data associated with millions of arthropod specimens are not easily accessible. To overcome this, SCAN will develop methods for integrating existing databases, catalogue-image specimens, develop new electronic identification techniques, and produce a virtual library of ground-dwelling arthropods (beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, ants). In addition the project will work with the existing project Filtered Push to increase the capacity of experts to provide remote identifications and annotations of data that can be sent throughout the network.

The comprehensive SCAN online library and expert information will be available to the public as well as professionals in taxonomy, ecology, and climate change science. Smaller institutions will be provided increased access to large data sets for promoting research. The SCAN datasets will support a number of ongoing projects examining the effects of environmental and land-use change on individual arthropod species. By increasing access to this information, SCAN will stimulate new research and increased awareness in biodiversity conservation throughout the region. Over 50 undergraduates also will be trained in cyberinfrastructure, systematics, and ecology. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).

Current Research

The current research focus is to use the data for niche/biodiversity modeling, historical ecology, and improving taxonomic resources for inventories, monitoring, and ecological studies that do not have the direct involvement of taxonomists.

The modeling aspect involves a suite of possible activities including present-day niche modeling, species distribution modeling (e.g., MaxEnt), and multi-species modeling to examine patterns of biodiversity. All formal modeling can include both forward projections under various climate change scenarios, and backward projections to understand possible historical or paleo distributions.

Project Websites & Social Media

SCAN Website http://scan1.acis.ufl.edu
SCAN Portal

Project Leadership

Project Sponsor: Northern Arizona University (NSF Award 1207371)

Principal Investigator (PI): Neil Cobb (PI), Kelly Miller (Co-PI), Paul Heinrich (Co-PI)

Collaborating Award PIs:
Arizona State University, Nico Franz & Ed Gilbert; Colorado State University, Boris Kondratieff; Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Frank Krell & Paula Cushing; New Mexico State University, Scott Bundy; Texas A&M, John Oswald & Ed Riley; University of Arizona, Wendy Moore; University of Colorado at Boulder, Deane Bowers; University of New Mexico, Kelly Miller; Texas Tech University, James Cokendolpher; Harvard University, James Hanken & Paul Morris

Project Collaborators

Map of Collaborating Institutions

Arizona State University (ASU) (NSF Award 1207107)
Colorado State University, C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity (CSU) (NSF Award 1206775)
Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) (NSF Award 1207186)
Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ)
New Mexico State University (NMSU) (NSF Award 1207187)
Northern Arizona University, Colorado Plateau Museum of Arthropod Biodiversity (NAUF)
Texas A&M University (TAMU) (NSF Award 1207033)
Texas A&M University Tri-Trophic Interactions Collection (TAMU)
Texas Tech University (TTU) (NSF Award 1206951)
University of Arizona (UA) (NSF Award 1206382)
University of Colorado Museum of Natural History (UCB) (NSF Award 1206706)
University of New Mexico, Museum of Southwestern Biology (UNM)

Unfunded participants:
Denver Botanic Gardens Collection of Arthropods (DBG)
Dugway Proving Ground Natural History Collection (DUGWAY)
Kutztown University (GPSC)
National Park Collections at Colorado State University (CSU-CSUNPS)
National Park Collections at Northern Arizona University (NAU-NPS)
Purdue University (PU)
San Diego State University, Terrestrial Arthropods Collection (SDSU)
University of Georgia (UGCA)
University of Hawaii Insect Museum (UHIM)
University of Kentucky, Hymenoptera Institute Collection (UKY)
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (UTC)
University of Utah Natural History Museum (UMNH)
Utah Department of Agriculture and Food Entomology Collection (UDAF)
Western Washington University (WWU)

Protocols & Workflows

Project Resources

Publications

Brusca, Richard C., John F. Wiens, Wallace M. Meyer, Jeffrey A. Eble, Kimberly Franklin, Jonathan T. Overpeck, and Wendy Moore. “Dramatic Response to Climate Change in the Southwest: Robert Whittaker’s 1963 Arizona Mountain Plant Transect Revisited.” Ecology and Evolution 3, no. 10 (2013): 3307–19. doi:10.1002/ece3.720.
Cushing, Paula E., Matthew R. Graham, Lorenzo Prendini, and Jack O. Brookhart. “A Multilocus Molecular Phylogeny of the Endemic North American Camel Spider Family Eremobatidae (Arachnida: Solifugae).” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 92 (November 2015): 280–93. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2015.07.001.
Cushing, PE. “Colorado Spider Survey.” Wings: Essays on Invertebrate Conservation 37, no. 1 (2014): 13–16.
Lee, Sangmi. “Preliminary List of the Lepidopterous Insects in the Arizona State University Hasbrouck Insect Collection.” Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity 7, no. 1 (March 2014): e76–94. doi:10.1016/j.japb.2014.03.002.
Franz, Nico M., Charles W. O’Brien, Sarah D. Shirota, Michael T. Shillingburg, and Edward E. Gilbert. “Assembling a Virtual Weevils of North America Checklist with Symbiota – Preliminary Insights.” In 12th Biennial Colorado Plateau Conference Proceedings, 2014. http://taxonbytes.org/pdf/FranzEtAl2014-AssemblingWoNA.pdf.
Gries, Corinna, Edward E. Gilbert, and Nico M. Franz. “Symbiota – A Virtual Platform for Creating Voucher-Based Biodiversity Information Communities.” Biodiversity Data Journal 2, no. 2 (2014): e1114. doi:10.3897/BDJ.2.e1114.
Krell, Frank-thorsten, and Jeffrey T Stephenson. “The Entomology Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science Has a New Home.” Denver Museum of Nature & Science Reports 1 (2014): 1–10. http://www.dmns.org/media/2267277/195-dmnsrep2014.pdf.
Lannoye, E. “A New Middle Paleocene Mammalian Fauna from the Fort Union Formation, Great Divide Basin, Wyoming.” University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 2015. Lee, Sangmi. “Preliminary List of the Lepidopterous Insects in the Arizona State University Hasbrouck Insect Collection.” Journal of Asia-Pacific Biodiversity 7, no. 1 (March 2014): e76–94. doi:10.1016/j.japb.2014.03.002.
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. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135210.
Moore, Wendy, Wallace M. Meyer, Jeffrey A. Eble, Kimberly Franklin, John F. Wiens, and Richard C. Brusca. “Introduction to the Arizona Sky Island Arthropod Project (ASAP): Systematics , Biogeography , Ecology, and Population Genetics of Arthropods of the Madrean Sky Islands.” In Merging Science and Management in a Rapidly Changing World: Biodiversity and Management of the Madrean Archipelago III and 7th Conference on Research and Resource Management in the Southwestern Deserts; 2012 May 1-5; Tucson, AZ, edited by GJ Gottfried, PF Ffolliott, BS Gebow, LG Eskew, and LC Collins, 144–68. Tucson, AZ, 2013. http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/44427.
Smith, Aaron D. “Phylogenetic Revision of the North American Asidini (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae).” Systematic Entomology 38, no. 3 (2013): 585–614. doi:10.1111/syen.12017.
Whitman-zai, Julie, Maren Francis, Margaret Geick, and Paula E. Cushing. “Revision and Morphological Phylogenetic Analysis of the Funnel Web Spider Genus Agelenopsis (Araneae: Agelenidae).” The Journal of Arachnology 43 (2015): 1–25. doi:10.1636/K14-35.1.

Professional Presentations

iDigBio Summit V, 2015

PENs

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.

The broader impacts of this project will focus on the Navajo Nation, where researchers from the MCZ with Navajo scientists and student interns, have already collected more than 15,000 ants. Additional material to be developed with help from educators involved in Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) will include a local field guide to the ants. 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).

Project Sponsor: Harvard University (NSF Award 1305024)

Principal Investigator (PI): Naomi Pierce

Digitization PEN:Ground-dwelling Insects in the Brigham Young University Collection, Enhancement to SCAN

Activities in this project will result in the databasing of 52,300 insect specimens from the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University (BYU). The BYU collection is the largest insect collection west of the Great Plains and east of the Pacific coast. Many of the BYU specimens were collected in the first half of the 20th century, and they therefore contribute a great deal of legacy data critical for scientific studies. It preserves a wealth of information on distributions and habits of important species, including agricultural pests, medically important species, threatened and endangered species, and beneficial species such as pollinators. This information will be made widely accessible by cataloguing and photographing specimens and then publishing the results on the Web. The project will provide an outstanding mentored experience for numerous students, including those traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. In addition, the project will result in an interactive museum display to teach basic principles in the change of organismal distributions over time.

The insect collection at Brigham Young University (BYU) joins the Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) in creating an extensive, Web-accessible catalogue of museum specimens. Project activities include: (1) Capturing collecting and identification data from 52,000 previously uncatalogued ground-dwelling arthropod specimens from the BYU collection representing the four focal insect families in SCAN: Acrididae, Carabidae, Tenebrionidae, and Formicidae. (2) Georeferencing specimen localities contributed to SCAN, utilizing GEOLocate and other resources, and upgrading fading locality labels on legacy specimens with archival quality labels. (3) Producing high-resolution images of type specimens of all ground-dwelling arthropod species whose type material is housed at BYU. (4) Contributing to SCAN's synthetic regional database to promote accessible, well-structured, taxonomically sound data for modeling climate change impacts on species distributions, and thereby enhancing SCAN's remote specimen annotation and identification workflows. 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 (iDigBio.org) portals.

Project Sponsor: Brigham Young University (NSF Award 1408607)

Principal Investigators (PIs):
Shawn Clark (PI)
Neil Cobb (Co-PI)
Charles Nelson (Co-PI)
Michael Whiting (Co-PI)

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.

Dramatic changes in the American Southwest over the past century has resulted in greater pressure for resources, particularly water. Past and future changes will be visible as alterations in the community of plants and animals of the region. This project seeks to add data that fills critical gaps in the SCAN TCN project for two families, Tenebrionidae and Carabidae, of beetles. These data will be a major contribution to monitoring and assessing environmental changes in the region and their effects on biological diversity. 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 (iDigBio.org).

Project Sponsor: Ohio State University (NSF Award 1503659)

Principal Investigators (PIs):
Norman Johnson (PI)
Luciana Musetti (Co-PI)

Facebook: OSU Triplehorn Insect Collection

Twitter:
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@osuc_curator