Digitization TCN: Collaborative Research: Documenting marine biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate collections (DigIn)

数字化 TCN：合作研究：通过无脊椎动物收藏数字化记录海洋生物多样性 (DigIn)

• 批准号: 2001303
• 负责人: Kevin Kocot
• 金额: $ 3.32万
• 依托单位: University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-11-01 至 2024-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2001303&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Digitization; TCN; Collaborative; Research; Documenting

For two centuries, America has amassed an unparalleled collection of specimens from exploring the world's oceans. They were pulled up with nets, scooped up from seabeds with grabs, and hand-collected by divers, all contributing to a library of biodiversity that captures the state of life in the ocean - year after year, decade after decade. The broadest evolutionary scope of those collections is in the marine invertebrates, animals without backbones - sea stars, corals, worms, jellyfish, crabs, and thousands of other animals. That library of preserved marine invertebrates is our essential guide to the diversity of ocean life across the globe. And because they encapsulate data from the moment they were picked up, these institutional collections also act as a time machine, letting us use the past to understand how our present will become the future. But there is a problem - vast numbers of these specimens are essentially invisible outside of a tiny community of museum specialists. The only record of these specimens' existence is on labels enclosed in the jars with the preserved animals or in paper logbooks on a shelf. These specimens will remain nearly undiscoverable on museum shelves until their core descriptive information is made digitally available. Therefore, this project will create public digital records for over 7.5 million specimens from our nation's legacy of marine exploration, thereby making the immense investment in the specimens' acquisition available to 21st Century biodiversity and ecosystems research. Because these specimens provide a visible and tangible window into our oceans' enchanting biodiversity, this project will involve STEM educators and student educators in the digitization effort, so that they will be able to reflect their science experiences directly back to the classroom. The public will be involved virtually, by contributing transcription of specimen label data. Digitization of alcohol-preserved marine specimens has never been carried out on this scale. A major challenge lies in the location of the data: written, typed, or printed on labels in the jars with the specimens. In many cases, that will require opening the jar, extracting the label, and either transcribing it directly or photographing it for later transcription - for hundreds of thousands of jars. The immediate participants in this program will digitize most or all of the marine invertebrate collections at nineteen institutions across the country, more than doubling the number of digital records for marine invertebrates in the U.S. All data will be publicly available through existing data portals, including iDigBio.org, using standardized data formats, thereby dramatically enhancing the accessibility of biodiversity data for comprehensive, systems-based analysis of ocean ecosystems.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.

两个世纪以来，美国从探索世界海洋中积累了无与伦比的标本。他们被蚊帐拉起来，抓住海床，并由潜水员手工收集，所有这些都为生物多样性图书馆做出了贡献，该图书馆捕获了海洋中的海洋状况 - 十年后的十年又一年。这些收藏的最广泛的进化范围是海洋无脊椎动物，没有骨架的动物 - 海星，珊瑚，蠕虫，水母，螃蟹和数千种动物。该保存的海洋无脊椎动物图书馆是我们全球海洋生物多样性的基本指南。而且由于它们从接收到的那一刻起就封装了数据，因此这些机构收藏也充当了时间机器，让我们利用过去来了解我们现在将如何成为未来。但是存在问题 - 这些标本中的大量标本本质上是一个很小的博物馆专家社区之外的看不见的。这些标本存在的唯一记录是在罐子中包含有保存的动物的罐子或架子上的纸记录中的标签上。这些标本将在博物馆货架上几乎无法被发现，直到将其核心描述性信息用于数字上。因此，该项目将从我们国家的海洋探索遗产中创建超过750万个标本的公共数字记录，从而对21世纪生物多样性和生态系统研究的标本收购进行巨大投资。由于这些标本为我们的海洋迷人的生物多样性提供了一个可见且有形的窗口，因此该项目将涉及STEM教育者和学生教育工作者进行数字化工作，以便他们能够直接反映其科学经验回到课堂。公众将通过贡献样品标签数据的转录实际上参与其中。饮酒保存的海洋标本的数字化从未在此规模上进行。一个重大挑战在于数据的位置：带有标本的罐子上的标签上书面，键入或打印。在许多情况下，这需要打开罐子，提取标签并直接转录标签或将其拍摄以进行以后的转录 - 数十万罐。 The immediate participants in this program will digitize most or all of the marine invertebrate collections at nineteen institutions across the country, more than doubling the number of digital records for marine invertebrates in the U.S. All data will be publicly available through existing data portals, including iDigBio.org, using standardized data formats, thereby dramatically enhancing the accessibility of biodiversity data for comprehensive, systems-based analysis of ocean生态系统。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评论标准的评估来支持的。