Improvements to the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection, including updates to its database management system

杜兰大学的鱼类收藏是以皇家D.萨特库斯的名字命名的，他收集了大部分标本，是世界上最大的幼体后(幼体到成体大小)鱼类标本的研究收藏，目前有204,105个编目物种的7,407,714个标本。该收藏品在鱼类收藏品中是独一无二的，因为几十年来从同一地点重复采集样本，并在大量批次中采集了大量常见鱼类物种的标本。来自Suttkus鱼类收藏的标本支持广泛发表的研究，从分类学描述到解剖学、入侵物种、群落生态学、保护、环境中的微塑料、考古学和基于机器学习的物种分类的研究。在杜兰最近收购了路易斯安那大学门罗大学(ULM)尼尔·H·道格拉斯鱼类收藏馆(ULM)的大部分标本后，该收藏将继续增加90万个标本，涉及6.4万个地块。杜兰在2017年领导了一项拯救该收藏的努力。拟议的项目将满足萨特库斯和道格拉斯鱼类收藏的管理和数据库需求。来自新奥尔良历史悠久的黑人学院和大学(HBCU)的学生将被招募参加实习，这将使他们参与到该项目中，并向他们介绍生物多样性研究和收藏护理方面的职业。该项目将对Suttkus Fish Collection进行重大改进，将收藏范围扩大到杜兰Hebert中心园区的第三栋建筑，在A-2地堡创建两个大型收藏储存区，并将罐子从收藏的另外两栋建筑移至这些新的储存区。为了进一步确保资源的安全，将在处理罐区时满足它们的管理需求，来自Neil H.Douglas(ULM)鱼类收集的标本和数据将被整合到Suttkus鱼类收集中。大样本设施(燃料库A-15)中由于垃圾桶盖有问题而导致酒精蒸发的问题将通过用48个新的大型存储容器替换来解决。此外，Suttkus Fish Collection的数据库管理系统将进行更新，使其更加灵活、开源并与现代数据访问和共享技术兼容。该项目的成果将通过会议报告、出版物和软件发布向感兴趣的社区传播。采集管理系统的设计将是灵活的，以便任何想要使用它的生物多样性采集都可以采用。项目中产生的所有技术(收集管理系统的代码、文档和基础设施细节)将与生物多样性收集社区公开共享，标本数据将与iDigBio(idigBio.org)共享，增加这些数据的可及性。该奖项反映了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。

Tulane University’s fish collection, named in honor of Royal D. Suttkus, who collected most of its specimens, is the largest research collection of post-larval (juvenile to adult-sized) fish specimens in the world, presently housing 7,407,714 specimens in 204,105 cataloged species lots. The collection is unique among fish collections for having repetitive samples taken from the same sites over several decades and high numbers of lots with large numbers of specimens of common fish species. Specimens from the Suttkus Fish Collection support a wide breadth of published research, from taxonomic descriptions to studies of anatomy, invasive species, community ecology, conservation, microplastics in the environment, archaeology, and machine-learning based species classification. The collection will continue to grow by 900,000 additional specimens in 64,000 lots following Tulane’s recent acquisition of most of the specimens in the University of Louisiana Monroe’s (ULM) Neil H. Douglas Fish Collection, which Tulane led an effort to rescue in 2017. The proposed project will provide for curatorial and databasing needs of both the Suttkus and Douglas fish collections. Students from New Orleans Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will be recruited for internships that will involve them in the project and introduce them to careers in biodiversity research and collections care. This project will make significant improvements to the Suttkus Fish Collection, expanding the collection to a third building on Tulane’s Hebert Center campus, creating two large collection storage areas in Bunker A-2 and moving jar lots from the collection’s other two buildings to these new storage areas. To further secure the resource, curatorial needs will be addressed for the jar lots as they are being handled and specimens and data from the Neil H. Douglas (ULM) fish collection will be integrated into the Suttkus Fish Collection. A problem in the large-specimen facility (Bunker A-15) with alcohol evaporation due to the bins’ faulty lids will be addressed by replacing these with the 48 large new storage containers. In addition, the Suttkus Fish Collection’s Database Management System will be updated to make it more flexible, open source and compatible with modern data access and sharing technology. The results of the project will be disseminated to communities of interest through conference presentations, publications, and software releases. Design of the collection management system will be flexible so that it can be adopted by any biodiversity collections that want to use it. All technology produced in the project (code, documentation and infrastructure details for the collection management system) will be shared openly with the biodiversity collections community, and specimen data will be shared with iDigBio (idigbio.org), increasing the accessibility of these data.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.