CSBR: Increased capacity for research and student engagement at the Frost Entomological Museum

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Natural history collections record the world’s diversity through time and support the scientific community’s understanding of changing ecosystem dynamics. In the face of declining insect biodiversity worldwide, it is more important now than ever for entomology collections to preserve, digitize, and disseminate specimen data to the broader community. The Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State cares for more than 1.3 million specimens that span the diversity of insects. This collection stands to grow further, through the incorporation of satellite collections of pollinators, especially bees (more than 125,000 specimens), and through the activities of the Insect Biodiversity Center (IBC), a recently established research initiative at Penn State. The infrastructure provided through this grant increases the storage capacity of the Frost by 50%, allowing for the curation of these collections and to serve as a repository for scaled up efforts to understand insect diversity through time. The award also provides the resources to digitize the substantial aphid collection (approximately 224,000 specimens on 49,000 slides), which holds important data regarding these insects’ plant hosts, and aquatic insects (approximately 100,000 specimens in 15,000 vials), which are indicators of habitat health. These improvements will facilitate research that addresses native pollinator decline, epidemiology, global climate change and its impact on species distributions and invasive species, niche restrictions, indicator species, and the evolutionary history of insects. The project will also generate data that contribute to ongoing research on imperiled insects and will fill critical taxonomic, geographical, and temporal gaps in existing datasets.A high-density compactor storage system will be installed in the Frost Museum in order to accommodate new rows of cabinets for pinned insects. These cabinets will accommodate approximately 1,600 drawers of expanded space. A portion of this storage will be utilized by incorporating the pollinator collection previously housed at Penn State’s Fruit Research and Extension Center and specimens generated by Penn State’s Center for Pollinator Research. The aphid collection, which consists of slide-mounted specimens, will be imaged on a flatbed scanner and then moved to new custom-built slide cabinets. The slide scans will be transcribed in the Frost Museum database, georeferenced, and the data shared with iDigBio and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The aquatic insect collection likewise will be imaged and rehoused in new, expanded ethanol storage. The lot images will be transcribed, georeferenced, and the data shared with the above repositories, making them accessible to the public. A graduate student and at least two undergraduates will receive training in collections care, management, and digitization.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.