PBI: Collaborative Research: The Megadiverse, Microdistributed Spider Family Oonopidae

PBI：合作研究：巨型多样性、微分布的蜘蛛科 Oonopidae

• 批准号: 0613928
• 负责人: Gustavo Hormiga
• 金额: $ 7.37万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0613928&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PBI; Collaborative; Research; Megadiverse; Microdistributed

Researchers from three U.S. museums and two U.S. universities, plus a worldwide group of over 20 colleagues, will collaborate to conduct a global survey and inventory of the dwarf hunting spiders. These animals are very poorly known; preliminary data indicate that the 459 currently described species represent only about 20% of the actual diversity of the group. The team will assemble and sort the specimens available in collections and acquire new material through 12 expeditions that will concentrate on securing better samples of forest floor and canopy-dwelling species. Team members will build Internet-accessible databases of the species, all specimen locality data, and images; a new application will allow team members to enter descriptive data into a multi-user database, in a highly structured format that will allow direct use of that information in formal descriptions for publication, on species web pages, in phylogenetic analyses, and in interactive keys. Automated identification systems, using artificial neural networks, will be developed, and the accuracy of those systems will be compared with that achieved by workers, ranging from total beginners to knowledgeable specialists, using interactive keys to the same species. Other impacts of the project include training several high school, undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students (with emphasis on recruiting members of groups currently underrepresented in the science workforce). Project outreach plans include a major traveling museum exhibition designed to focus public attention on the importance and excitement of biodiversity discovery and preservation. Extensive public-aimed web materials will be developed that will be useful for pre-college level teaching.

来自三个美国博物馆和两所美国大学的研究人员，以及由 20 多名同事组成的全球团队，将合作对矮狩猎蜘蛛进行全球调查和清点。这些动物鲜为人知。初步数据表明，目前描述的 459 个物种仅占该群体实际多样性的约 20%。该团队将对馆藏中的标本进行组装和分类，并通过 12 次探险获取新材料，重点是获取更好的森林地面和树冠物种样本。团队成员将建立可通过互联网访问的物种数据库、所有标本地点数据和图像；新的应用程序将允许团队成员以高度结构化的格式将描述性数据输入多用户数据库，该格式将允许在正式描述中、物种网页、系统发育分析和交互键中直接使用该信息。将开发使用人工神经网络的自动识别系统，并将这些系统的准确性与工人（从初学者到知识渊博的专家）使用相同物种的交互式密钥所实现的准确性进行比较。该项目的其他影响包括培训多名高中生、本科生、研究生和博士后学生（重点是招募目前在科学劳动力中代表性不足的群体成员）。项目推广计划包括举办大型巡回博物馆展览，旨在引起公众对生物多样性发现和保护的重要性和兴奋性的关注。将开发大量面向公众的网络材料，对大学预科水平的教学有用。