Digitization PEN: Small and Hungry: Enhancing LepNet TCN with microlepidoptera and 50 years of host plant data from the Essig Museum

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) is the most diverse order of insect herbivores. Rich in ecological data they are often models for co-evolution, population dynamics, and environmental change. Because of their dependence on particular plant species and climate zones, many species are used as environmental indicators of habitat quality and climatic shifts. However, digitization of insect collections, particularly Lepidoptera, lag far behind most other groups due to the large size of collections, the small and delicate nature of specimens, and the tiny, difficult to read specimen labels. The Lepidoptera of North America Network (LepNet) TCN is addressing this paucity of data by digitizing occurrence records of butterflies and moths from over 28 institutions across the United States, along with high resolution images of over 95,000 species. The Essig Museum is contributing to this effort by adding over 100 years of specimen records and ecological data from western North America. All data and images are freely and immediately available online through aggregators, including iDigBio, GBIF, SCAN, and the Essig Museum Database, to researchers, educators, land managers, conservation planners, and the public.The Essig Museum is a leading collection of Lepidoptera in the western US with extensive taxonomic breadth and occurrence density, particularly for microlepidoptera in northern California and Mexico. Past and ongoing projects of the Essig Museum focus on specialized habitats such dunes, coastal scrub, and offshore islands, as well as recovery from wildfires and long-term sampling of regional preserves. Moreover, a long tradition of rearing specimens from host plants, including fruit and stem borers, gall-formers, and leaf-miners, has resulted in many decades of detailed records of interaction data including host plants and parasitoids. This project will disseminate georeferenced digital data for 125,000 butterfly and moth specimens, along with high resolution images of 2000 species, including 608 holotypes. These data will fill many gaps for western North America to improve niche modelling efforts and investigate population dynamics for the past 100 years. High resolution images are used to train automated identification services to address bottlenecks in ecological and conservation research and rapid identification of pests. Much of the digitization work will be carried out by undergraduate students who will also receive training in biodiversity informatics and insect biology. Data and analyses derived from this effort will be used in online and public exhibits related to insect evolution, global change biology, and natural history of western North America.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.