CSBR: Natural History: Enhancement of the Ethanol-Based Collections of the Texas A&M University Insect Collection

CSBR：自然历史：德克萨斯州 A 乙醇收藏的增强

• 批准号: 1756479
• 负责人: John Oswald
• 金额: $ 42.58万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M AgriLife Research
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-01 至 2022-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1756479&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSBR; Natural; History; Enhancement; Ethanol

The verifiable scientific basis for much of what we know about the diversity of life on Earth resides in natural history collections. The specimens held in long-term trust in these collections constitute an irreplaceable resource for current and future generations of scientists seeking to answer the biological questions of today, and the unknown questions of tomorrow. The Texas A&M University Insect Collection (TAMUIC) is a major research collection of terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates with approximately 2.9 million specimens and regional strengths in the faunas of the southwestern U.S. and northern neotropics. The collection is an important node in the physical infrastructure documenting invertebrate biodiversity throughout these regions. It supports one of the most active educational and research programs in systematic entomology in the U.S., and provides scientists across the U.S. and around the world with access to high-quality specimens for research. The supported project will enhance the TAMUIC in two significant ways. First, it will allow the TAMUIC to acquire and incorporate the Dean Araneae Collection, a nationally-important collection of spiders built up over the course of a 40-year career by Mr. Allen Dean. Second, the acquisition of the Dean collection presents a logical and timely opportunity for the TAMUIC to undertake a comprehensive recuration of its entire collection of alcohol-preserved specimens, and to capture fundamental taxonomic, geographic, and temporal data from both collections in order to make those data available for use in studies in many scientific disciplines.The search for scientific solutions to complex environmental problems has become increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary, and relies more and more on materials and data from multiple sources. Meaningful investigation of large-scale problems in particular will come to depend upon ready access to shared sets of relevant data that can be pooled on demand from multiple digital sources and subjected to appropriate analysis. This project will capture and make available to the research community more than 50,000 new, vial-level, digital records of terrestrial and freshwater insects and arachnids. Importantly, it will also facilitate the long-term preservation of the physical specimens upon which those records are based. The ability of the TAMUIC to continue to serve as a source of high-quality, ethanol-based materials for the scientific community will be enhanced by the project's support for a comprehensive re-curation effort covering all of the TAMUIC's alcohol materials, including conversion of the collection from a free-vial to a double containment specimen storage system. Collection cabinetry will be upgraded to meet applicable standards; curatorial materials will be standardized throughout and upgraded to archival quality; and ethanol collections will be consolidated into a single physical space. The project is an integral part of the TAMUIC's long-term plan to upgrade its resources to modern collections-community standards. Specimen data digitized as part of this project will be shared with iDigBio (iDigBio.org).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.

我们所了解的地球生命多样性的大部分可验证的科学基础都存在于自然历史收藏中。 这些藏品中长期保存的标本对于当代和未来几代寻求回答当今生物学问题和未来未知问题的科学家来说是不可替代的资源。 德克萨斯农工大学昆虫保藏中心 (TAMUIC) 是陆地和淡水无脊椎动物的主要研究保藏中心，拥有约 290 万个标本，在美国西南部和北部新热带地区的动物群中具有区域优势。 该收藏品是记录这些地区无脊椎动物生物多样性的物质基础设施的重要节点。 它支持美国最活跃的系统昆虫学教育和研究项目之一，并为美国和世界各地的科学家提供高质量的研究标本。 所支持的项目将从两个重要方面增强 TAMUIC。 首先，它将使 TAMUIC 能够收购并合并 Dean Araneae Collection，这是艾伦·迪恩 (Allen Dean) 先生在 40 年职业生涯中建立的全国重要的蜘蛛收藏。 其次，收购 Dean 藏品为 TAMUIC 提供了一个合乎逻辑且及时的机会，可以对其整个酒精保存标本藏品进行全面重新修复，并从这两个藏品中获取基本的分类学、地理和时间数据，以便这些数据可用于许多科学学科的研究。对复杂环境问题的科学解决方案的探索已变得越来越协作和跨学科，并且越来越依赖于来自多个来源的材料和数据。 特别是对大规模问题的有意义的调查将取决于能否随时访问共享的相关数据集，这些数据可以根据需要从多个数字源汇集并进行适当的分析。 该项目将捕获并向研究界提供超过 50,000 个新的、小瓶级的陆地和淡水昆虫和蜘蛛的数字记录。 重要的是，它还将促进这些记录所依据的物理标本的长期保存。 该项目支持涵盖 TAMUIC 所有酒精材料的全面再处理工作，包括将从自由瓶到双容器标本存储系统的收集。 收藏柜将升级以满足适用的标准；策展材料将全程标准化并升级至档案质量；乙醇收藏将被整合到一个物理空间中。 该项目是 TAMUIC 长期计划的一个组成部分，该计划旨在将其资源升级到现代收藏界标准。 作为该项目一部分的数字化样本数据将与 iDigBio (iDigBio.org) 共享。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。