CSBR: Natural History: Improvement of the Mississippi Entomological Museum for organization of collection and digitization of specimen data

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The Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University holds more than 1.6 million research specimens from all 50 states of the U.S. and 48 other countries. This research resource is especially important in documenting the insect diversity of the southern Coastal Plain, including many imperiled habitats. The collection also holds specimens of disease vectors as well as agricultural and forestry pests that have been documented in Mississippi for the past 120 years, and these specimens are important for evaluating their past, current, and future distributions. The museum's identification center provides early detection of invasive species that threaten the biosecurity of food, fiber, and forests in 13 states. The acquisition of specimens from these activities has resulted in unique holdings among biological collections in the U.S., and these include major collections of ants and grasshoppers. More than 100 species new to science have been described based on specimens held in the collection with many more still to be described. During the past five years, the museum has hosted 112 visiting researchers from 42 institutions in 25 states and five other countries. Concurrently, the museum has an active education and outreach program with curricula designed for elementary students and table events involving displays and informative hand-outs provided at public events. The annual growth of collection holdings during the past five years has approached 30% because of fieldwork, donations, trap samples from other states, and acquisition of other institutional collections. At present the museum is over full capacity, with cabinets holding specimens limiting access in hallways and offices, and no space is available for future additions of specimens.This project has three objectives. The first is to expand storage space for research specimens by acquisition of a compactor system that will include moveable carriages on rails that hold cabinets. This compactor system will provide an estimated 30% increase in capacity. The second objective is to resolve the current hazards of storage of flammable preservatives in a multi-use building that includes classrooms for students. Almost 400,000 curated specimens and a large number of bulk samples are currently stored in ethanol and held in various rooms and hallways (some adjacent to classrooms) of the Clay Lyle Entomology Building. This concentration of specimens in alcohol has presented a safety hazard because the volatility of the preservative. The acquisition of a walk-in refrigerated unit, located outside the building, would alleviate the current hazards of storing specimens in ethanol in the building. The third objective will be the digitization of specimen label data for ants and grasshoppers. Both ants and grasshoppers have ecological and economic significance to the public, especially for invasive species of ants. The museum has the third largest collections of both groups of insects in eastern U.S., but specimen data are currently unavailable to others. The digitization effort will make these data available to researchers and the public through data sharing with iDigBio (iDigBio.org) and other global resources such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF.org).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.