Digitization PEN: Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN

该奖项是为了补充节肢动物网络（SCAN）专题收集网络（TCN）的西南收集。SCAN是一个博物馆的合作，汇集他们的资源和信息，为他们所有的地面昆虫和近亲标本。哈佛的比较动物学博物馆（MCZ）将与SCAN合作，在蚂蚁的识别和数字化方面贡献世界知名的专业知识。来自美国西南部的大约90，000个蚂蚁标本的数字记录，包括模式标本（已描述物种的个体蚂蚁），将被成像，数字化并在线提供。该项目将对研究生物多样性和蚂蚁物种对西南部气候变化的反应的科学家以及寻求识别其物种的非科学家都有价值。该项目的更广泛影响将集中在纳瓦霍族，来自MCZ的研究人员与纳瓦霍族科学家和学生实习生已经收集了15，000多只蚂蚁。在参与《生命百科全书》（EOL）的教育工作者的帮助下，将开发更多的材料，包括当地的蚂蚁实地指南。该奖项是作为国家资源的一部分，通过推进生物收藏品数字化计划的生物收藏品的数字化，从这个奖项产生的所有数据将通过国家资源（iDigBio.org）提供。

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 (iDigBio.org).