Collaborative Research: Ranges: Building Capacity to Extend Mammal Specimens from Western North America

合作研究：范围：建设能力以扩展北美西部的哺乳动物标本

• 批准号: 2228390
• 负责人: Eric Rickart
• 金额: $ 3.6万
• 依托单位: University of Utah
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-01 至 2027-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2228390&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Ranges; Building; Capacity

The specimens contained in natural history collections contribute to scientific progress and social wellbeing. Their unique value comes from the high-quality information they contain and the documentation indicating how they were collected. Of particular value are trait measurements that document how species interact with each other and how they vary though time, for example, when responding to environmental changes. Unfortunately, traits for museum specimens are often only available in non-digital and non-standard formats. This limits the ability of researchers to find and use them to their full potential. This award will establish the Ranges Digitization Network (“Ranges”). The goal of the network is to digitize traits from over one million mammal specimens in 19 U.S. natural history museums. The network will produce datasets that are in standard format and easy to find in online biodiversity platforms, such as iDigBio. This will allow researchers to build better baselines for biodiversity and improve predictions of how mammals respond to changing environments. Ranges will also spark collaboration among the museum community and data scientists, creating solutions usable broadly. The network will employ a diverse human workforce in digitization and research tasks, and it will engage the public through citizen science activities and museum exhibits. This will address a major remaining digitization challenge for U.S. museums, to expand utility of specimens and use them to create new scientific knowledge. Digitization of U.S. natural history museums over the past two decades has improved data sharing and research capacity in the life sciences. Among the most important data associated with museum specimens are the morphological and reproductive traits of individuals. These traits are informative about ecology, evolution, and responses of organisms to environmental change. Unfortunately, traits from specimens remain incompletely digitized across museums and hard to locate on the internet. This inhibits their discovery and use at a time of pressing global change. Ranges will digitize and publish traits from approximately 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America. The project focuses on this region due to its complex topography and climate, and because it is a center of mammalian biodiversity. The specific goals of the network are to extend existing software tools, develop new standards for mammal trait data, and coordinate digitization across museum partners. New, digital trait data on biodiversity data platforms such as iDigBio will transform data accessibility and foster new evolutionary, ecological, and biomedical research. Ranges will also collaborate with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to ensure compatibility with trait data collected throughout the lifetime of that network. Using the above approaches, Ranges will lay a foundation for building an extended specimen network for mammals.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.

自然历史收藏中包含的标本有助于科学进步和社会福祉，它们的独特价值来自于它们所包含的高质量信息以及表明它们如何收集的文档，其中记录物种如何相互作用的特征测量具有特殊价值。不幸的是，博物馆标本的特征通常只能以非数字和非标准格式提供，这限制了研究人员充分发现和使用它们的能力。该奖项将建立范围数字化。该网络的目标是将 19 个美国自然历史博物馆中超过 100 万个哺乳动物标本的特征数字化，该网络将以标准格式生成数据集，并易于在在线生物多样性平台中找到，例如iDigBio。这将使研究人员能够建立更好的生物多样性基线，并改进对哺乳动物如何应对不断变化的环境的预测。范围还将激发博物馆社区和数据科学家之间的合作，创建可广泛使用的解决方案。它将通过公民科学活动和博物馆展览吸引公众参与，这将解决美国博物馆面临的主要数字化挑战，扩大标本的效用并利用它们创造新的科学知识。过去二十年来，美国自然历史博物馆提高了生命科学领域的数据共享和研究能力，其中与博物馆标本相关的最重要数据包括个体的形态和生殖特征。不幸的是，标本的特征在博物馆中仍然不完全数字化，并且很难在互联网上找到它们，这在全球变化紧迫的时期阻碍了它们的发现和使用。由于该地区地形和气候复杂，并且是哺乳动物生物多样性的中心，该项目重点关注来自北美西部的 120 万个非海洋哺乳动物标本。该网络的具体目标是扩展现有的软件工具、开发。新标准Ranges 还将与国家生态观测站网络合作，以获取哺乳动物特征数据，并协调生物多样性数据平台（例如 iDigBio）的数字化。 NEON），以确保与该网络整个生命周期中收集的性状数据的兼容性，Ranges 将为构建哺乳动物扩展标本网络奠定基础。该奖项是 NSF 的法定使命，并通过评估被认为值得支持。利用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准。