CSBR: Natural History: Enhancement of the Ethanol-Based Collections of the Texas A&M University Insect Collection

CSBR：自然历史：德克萨斯州 A 乙醇收藏的增强

• 批准号: 1756479
• 负责人: John Oswald
• 金额: $ 42.58万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M AgriLife Research
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-01 至 2022-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1756479&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSBR; Natural; History; Enhancement; Ethanol

The verifiable scientific basis for much of what we know about the diversity of life on Earth resides in natural history collections. The specimens held in long-term trust in these collections constitute an irreplaceable resource for current and future generations of scientists seeking to answer the biological questions of today, and the unknown questions of tomorrow. The Texas A&M University Insect Collection (TAMUIC) is a major research collection of terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates with approximately 2.9 million specimens and regional strengths in the faunas of the southwestern U.S. and northern neotropics. The collection is an important node in the physical infrastructure documenting invertebrate biodiversity throughout these regions. It supports one of the most active educational and research programs in systematic entomology in the U.S., and provides scientists across the U.S. and around the world with access to high-quality specimens for research. The supported project will enhance the TAMUIC in two significant ways. First, it will allow the TAMUIC to acquire and incorporate the Dean Araneae Collection, a nationally-important collection of spiders built up over the course of a 40-year career by Mr. Allen Dean. Second, the acquisition of the Dean collection presents a logical and timely opportunity for the TAMUIC to undertake a comprehensive recuration of its entire collection of alcohol-preserved specimens, and to capture fundamental taxonomic, geographic, and temporal data from both collections in order to make those data available for use in studies in many scientific disciplines.The search for scientific solutions to complex environmental problems has become increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary, and relies more and more on materials and data from multiple sources. Meaningful investigation of large-scale problems in particular will come to depend upon ready access to shared sets of relevant data that can be pooled on demand from multiple digital sources and subjected to appropriate analysis. This project will capture and make available to the research community more than 50,000 new, vial-level, digital records of terrestrial and freshwater insects and arachnids. Importantly, it will also facilitate the long-term preservation of the physical specimens upon which those records are based. The ability of the TAMUIC to continue to serve as a source of high-quality, ethanol-based materials for the scientific community will be enhanced by the project's support for a comprehensive re-curation effort covering all of the TAMUIC's alcohol materials, including conversion of the collection from a free-vial to a double containment specimen storage system. Collection cabinetry will be upgraded to meet applicable standards; curatorial materials will be standardized throughout and upgraded to archival quality; and ethanol collections will be consolidated into a single physical space. The project is an integral part of the TAMUIC's long-term plan to upgrade its resources to modern collections-community standards. Specimen data digitized as part of this project will be shared with iDigBio (iDigBio.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.

我们所知道的关于地球上生命多样性的许多可验证的科学基础都存在于自然历史收藏中。这些收藏品中的标本是当代和后代科学家寻求回答今天的生物学问题和明天的未知问题的不可替代的资源。德克萨斯农工大学昆虫馆藏(TAMUIC)是陆生和淡水无脊椎动物的主要研究馆藏，在美国西南部和新热带北部的动物群中拥有约290万个标本和区域优势。该收藏是记录这些地区无脊椎动物生物多样性的有形基础设施中的一个重要节点。它支持美国系统昆虫学中最活跃的教育和研究项目之一，并为美国和世界各地的科学家提供用于研究的高质量标本。得到支持的项目将在两个重要方面加强TAMUIC。首先，它将允许TAMUIC收购并合并迪恩蜘蛛收藏，这是艾伦·迪恩在40年的职业生涯中建立的一个全国重要的蜘蛛收藏。其次，收购Dean收藏为TAMUIC提供了一个合乎逻辑和及时的机会，可以对其整个酒精保存标本收藏进行全面重新收集，并从这两个收藏中获取基本的分类学、地理和时间数据，以便将这些数据用于许多科学学科的研究。为复杂的环境问题寻找科学解决方案已变得越来越协作和跨学科，越来越依赖于来自多个来源的材料和数据。特别是对大规模问题进行有意义的调查，将取决于随时可以获得共享的相关数据集，这些数据集可以根据需要从多个数字来源汇集起来，并进行适当的分析。该项目将捕获50,000多个陆生和淡水昆虫和蜘蛛类的新的瓶级数字记录，并向研究界提供。重要的是，它还将促进这些记录所依据的实物标本的长期保存。TAMUIC继续作为科学界高质量乙醇材料的来源的能力将得到加强，因为该项目支持对TAMUIC所有酒精材料的全面重新整理工作，包括将收集的样品从免费瓶子转换为双密封标本存储系统。收藏柜将进行升级，以达到适用的标准；馆藏材料将全部标准化，并升级到档案质量；乙醇收藏将合并到一个单一的物理空间。该项目是TAMUIC将其资源升级到现代藏品社区标准的长期计划的组成部分。作为该项目的一部分而数字化的标本数据将与iDigBio(iDigBio.org)共享。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。