Digitization PEN: Facilitating a Shared Image Library and Occurrence Database for Ants of the Southwest as Part of the SCAN TCN

该奖项是对西南节肢动物收藏网络（SCAN）主题收藏网络（TCN）的补充。SCAN是一个博物馆间的合作项目，汇集了它们的资源，并将所有地栖昆虫及其近亲标本的信息数字化。哈佛大学比较动物学博物馆（MCZ）将与SCAN合作，在蚂蚁识别和数字化方面贡献世界知名的专业知识。来自美国西南部的大约9万种蚂蚁标本的数字记录，包括模式标本（描述了物种的单个蚂蚁），将被成像、数字化并在网上提供。该项目对研究西南地区生物多样性和蚂蚁物种对气候变化的反应的科学家，以及寻求确定其物种的非科学家都很有价值。这个项目更广泛的影响将集中在纳瓦霍民族，在那里，MCZ的研究人员与纳瓦霍科学家和学生实习生已经收集了超过15,000只蚂蚁。在参与生命百科全书（EOL）的教育工作者的帮助下，将开发更多的材料，包括当地的蚂蚁实地指南。该奖项是国家生物馆藏数字化资源的一部分，通过推进生物馆藏数字化计划，该奖项产生的所有数据将通过国家资源（iDigBio.org）提供。

An award is made to complement the Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) Thematic Collection Network (TCN). SCAN is a collaborative of museums that pool their resources and digitize information for all their specimens of ground-dwelling insects and close relatives. The Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard will partner with SCAN and contribute world-renowned expertise in the identification and digitization of ants. Digital records of the some 90,000 specimens of ants from the American Southwest, including the type specimens (individual ants from which species have been described), will be imaged, digitized and made available on line. The project will be of value both to scientists studying biodiversity and the responses of ant species to climate change in the Southwest, and to non-scientists seeking to identify their species. The broader impacts of this project will focus on the Navajo Nation, where researchers from the MCZ with Navajo scientists and student interns, have already collected more than 15,000 ants. Additional material to be developed with help from educators involved in Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) will include a local field guide to the ants. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).