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

生境改变和气候变化正在全球范围内以前所未有的速度发生。虽然预测未来环境的工具已经变得越来越复杂，但人们对生物多样性如何应对新环境的了解甚少。目前的提案代表了加州八个昆虫学收藏馆之间的合作，以收集标本，从而允许评估生物体的分布如何通过环境变化而改变。它利用该州昆虫学收集的悠久历史，开发了一个包含上世纪在重点地点收集的约100万个地理参考标本的数据库。样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。该项目将成为整合多个机构数据并将合并数据纳入地理空间框架的模式。人类驱动的环境变化已经对生物系统造成了巨大的影响。为了了解生物多样性将如何应对未来的环境变化，我们必须从过去的反应中学习。关于上个世纪栖息地改变之前和之后环境中存在的生物体，有大量数据可供使用;然而，这些信息大部分隐藏在博物馆藏品中，保存在数百万标本的标签上。拟议的这些收藏品的数字化和地理参照将改变科学家和公众的研究能力和获取信息的方式。它将产生一个来自整个加州自然保护区的目标分类群的完全地理参考数据库，该数据库将可在网络地图上搜索和提供。该提案包括在加州建立各种规模和观众的昆虫学博物馆，并为研究生和本科生提供分类学和系统学方面的教育，以及生物信息学和地理空间建模在生境改造和气候变化方面的应用。

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.