Collaborative Research: CalBug, an Interactive Database Using Arthropods to Examine Impacts of Climate Change and Habitat Modification

栖息地的改变和气候变化正以前所未有的速度在全球范围内发生。虽然预测未来环境的工具变得越来越复杂，但人们对生物多样性如何对新环境做出反应知之甚少。目前的提案代表了加州八个昆虫学收藏馆之间的合作，将标本数字化，从而可以评估生物体的分布是如何通过环境变化而改变的。它利用该州昆虫学收集的悠久历史，建立了一个数据库，其中包括上个世纪在重点地区收集的大约100万个地理参考标本。标本数据将用于地理空间分析，以了解物种分布与生境改变的类型和程度之间的关系。该项目将作为跨多个机构整合数据并将合并后的数据纳入地理空间框架的模型。人类驱动的环境变化已经对生物系统造成了巨大的影响。要了解生物多样性将如何对未来的环境变化作出反应，我们必须从它们过去的反应中学习。关于上个世纪生境改变前后环境中存在的生物的大量数据是可用的；然而，这些信息大多隐藏在博物馆的藏品中，以标签的形式保存在数以百万计的标本中。拟议的这些馆藏的数字化和地理参考将改变科学家和公众的研究能力和获取信息的途径。它将产生一个完整的地理参考数据库，该数据库来自加利福尼亚各地的自然保护区的目标类群，可以在网络地图上搜索和使用。该提案包括在加州建立各种规模的昆虫博物馆，并为研究生和本科生提供分类和系统方面的教育，同时将生物信息学和地理空间建模应用于栖息地改造和气候变化。

Habitat modification and climate change are occurring at unprecedented rates globally. While tools to predict future environments have become increasingly sophisticated, there is little understanding of how biodiversity will respond to novel environments. The current proposal represents collaboration among eight entomological collections in California to digitize specimens and thus allow assessment of how distributions of organisms have been modified through environmental change. It makes use of a long history of entomological collecting in the state to develop a database of approximately 1 million georeferenced specimens collected at focal localities over the last century. The specimen data will be used in geospatial analyses to understand the relationship between the distribution of species and the type and extent of habitat modification. The project will serve as a model for integrating data across multiple institutions and incorporating the combined data within a geospatial framework. Human-driven environmental change has already caused huge impacts on biological systems. To understand how biodiversity will respond to environmental change in the future, we must learn from their responses in the past. A large amount of data is available on organisms that existed in environments before and after habitat modification over the last century; however, much of this information is hidden within museum collections, held on labels among millions of specimens. The proposed digitization and georeferencing of these collections will transform research capability and access to information by both scientists and the public. It will result in a fully georeferenced database of target taxa from natural reserves throughout California that will be searchable and available on web-accessible maps. The proposal includes entomological museums of all sizes and audiences in California and provides education of graduate and undergraduate students in taxonomy and systematic, coupled with the use of bioinformatics and geospatial modeling as applied to habitat modification and climate change.