Digitization TCN: Collaborative Research Plants, Herbivores, and Parasitoids

Details

Capability: Climate Change

Subcapability: Climate Change Monitoring Research

Project Timeline: 7/1/2011-6/30/2015

This project--focused the Hemiptera herbivorous insect clade (aphids, scales, hoppers, cicadas, and true bugs), their host plants, and their parasitoid--combined the resources of 34 museums to capture and make available around 4 million specimen records, and unified a total of more than 7 million records from 15 botanical and 19 entomological collections into a unified database. These specimen records included specimen images, geocoordinates, and taxonomy. Lastly, a graduate-level training module in collection management and digitization will be developed, and a species-distribution modeling and data-mining symposium will be coordinated.

Following the completion of the database, the Tri-Trophic Databasing and imaging project web-portal will be enhanced to serve the data, including maps and images, for the tri-trophic association.