Collaborative Research: DigIn - Documenting marine biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate collections

合作研究：DigIn - 通过无脊椎动物收藏的数字化记录海洋生物多样性

• 批准号: 2001249
• 负责人: Paul Larson
• 金额: $ 7.65万
• 依托单位: Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-11-01 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2001249&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; DigIn; Documenting; marine

For two centuries, America has amassed an unparalleled collection of specimens from exploring the world's oceans. They were pulled up with nets, scooped up from seabeds with grabs, and hand-collected by divers, all contributing to a library of biodiversity that captures the state of life in the ocean - year after year, decade after decade. The broadest evolutionary scope of those collections is in the marine invertebrates, animals without backbones - sea stars, corals, worms, jellyfish, crabs, and thousands of other animals. That library of preserved marine invertebrates is our essential guide to the diversity of ocean life across the globe. And because they encapsulate data from the moment they were picked up, these institutional collections also act as a time machine, letting us use the past to understand how our present will become the future. But there is a problem - vast numbers of these specimens are essentially invisible outside of a tiny community of museum specialists. The only record of these specimens' existence is on labels enclosed in the jars with the preserved animals or in paper logbooks on a shelf. These specimens will remain nearly undiscoverable on museum shelves until their core descriptive information is made digitally available. Therefore, this project will create public digital records for over 7.5 million specimens from our nation's legacy of marine exploration, thereby making the immense investment in the specimens' acquisition available to 21st Century biodiversity and ecosystems research. Because these specimens provide a visible and tangible window into our oceans' enchanting biodiversity, this project will involve STEM educators and student educators in the digitization effort, so that they will be able to reflect their science experiences directly back to the classroom. The public will be involved virtually, by contributing transcription of specimen label data. Digitization of alcohol-preserved marine specimens has never been carried out on this scale. A major challenge lies in the location of the data: written, typed, or printed on labels in the jars with the specimens. In many cases, that will require opening the jar, extracting the label, and either transcribing it directly or photographing it for later transcription - for hundreds of thousands of jars. The immediate participants in this program will digitize most or all of the marine invertebrate collections at nineteen institutions across the country, more than doubling the number of digital records for marine invertebrates in the U.S. All data will be publicly available through existing data portals, including iDigBio.org, using standardized data formats, thereby dramatically enhancing the accessibility of biodiversity data for comprehensive, systems-based analysis of ocean ecosystems.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.

两个世纪以来，美国通过探索世界海洋积累了无与伦比的标本收藏。它们被渔网拉上来，用抓斗从海床上捞起来，由潜水员手工收集，所有这些都有助于建立一个生物多样性图书馆，捕捉海洋中的生命状态-年复一年，十年复一年。最广泛的进化范围是海洋无脊椎动物，没有脊椎的动物-海星，珊瑚，蠕虫，水母，螃蟹和成千上万的其他动物。这个保存完好的海洋无脊椎动物图书馆是我们了解地球仪海洋生物多样性的重要指南。因为它们从被收集的那一刻起就封装了数据，这些机构收集也充当了时间机器，让我们利用过去来理解我们的现在将如何成为未来。但有一个问题--大量的这些标本在博物馆专家的小社区之外基本上是看不见的。这些标本存在的唯一记录是在与保存的动物一起封闭在罐子中的标签上或在架子上的纸质日志中。这些标本在其核心描述信息以数字方式提供之前，几乎无法在博物馆的书架上展出。因此，该项目将为我国海洋勘探遗产中的750多万份标本创建公共数字记录，从而使标本采集方面的巨大投资可用于21世纪世纪生物多样性和生态系统研究。由于这些标本为我们的海洋迷人的生物多样性提供了一个可见和有形的窗口，该项目将让STEM教育工作者和学生教育工作者参与数字化工作，以便他们能够将他们的科学经验直接反映到课堂上。公众将通过贡献样本标签数据的转录来虚拟参与。酒精保存的海洋标本的数字化从未以这种规模进行过。一个主要的挑战在于数据的位置：书写，打字或打印在带有标本的罐子中的标签上。在许多情况下，这将需要打开罐子，提取标签，并直接转录或拍照，以便稍后转录-数十万个罐子。该计划的直接参与者将收集全国19个机构的大部分或所有海洋无脊椎动物收藏品，使美国海洋无脊椎动物的数字记录数量增加一倍以上iDigBio.org。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。