Recipient Organization
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
(N/A)
BLACKSBURG,VA 24061
Performing Department
Entomology
Non Technical Summary
Virginia Tech's Insect Collection is the oldest and largest entomology collection in Virginia. Founded in 1888 by William B. Alwood at the first Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station with just a few insects collected from apple orchards, it is now composed of more than 400,000 specimens. The collection is a preserved testament to the state's agricultural and natural heritage. In this Hatch Proposal, I outline a plan to organize, digitize, and catalog the specimens housed in the Virginia Tech's Entomology Collection (VTEC). Agriculturally and ecologically important insects will be the focus of this project. This work is important to Virginia and U.S. agriculture to support the study of native beneficial insect biodiversity and to support the prevention of invasive pest species.Insect collections are routinely used as a reference for border inspection and other regulatory issues, consumer safety, and biocontrol measures. In the U.S., for example, we import fruit, cars, electronics, and many other items. Unwanted stowaways in these shipments and invasive insect species threaten our crops, ecosystems and animal health. The spotted lanternfly, introduced to the U.S. (ca. 2014) from South Asia on imported shipping crates, is a recent example of an invasive insect pest that threatens several crop systems in the Commonwealth. At present, there are 50,000 invasive species in the U.S. that cause $120 billion in environmental and agricultural damage each year (Pimentel et al., 2005; IWGSC, 2009). By having a repository of local species in the Virginia Tech Entomology Collection, we can identify exotic species and respond rapidly. In terms of beneficial insects, the total economic value of pollination services exceeds $200 billion per year for the top 100 crops used globally for human food sources (Gallai et al., 2009; Losey and Vaughan, 2006). Our museum houses a substantial collection of native pollinators from our state, and serves as a benchmark of species diversity and distribution of this important guild of insects. By documenting our state's insects conserved in our collection, this project will provide a foundation for assessment, prediction, and modeling of these beneficial insects in Virginia.The Virginia Tech Insect Collection is at the forefront of defending our natural and agricultural resources against economically injurious insects.The collection provides a detailed historical record that enables us to reconstruct when, where, why, and how a harmful pest was introduced to the state. In addition, entomologists use the collection to study pollinating insects, describe new species, conserve our native insect fauna, and track the effects of climate change on our local biodiversity and environment. For example, describing our state's biodiversity highlights our research at a local level, and importantly prevents "anonymous extinction", whereby a species is rendered extinct before it is discovered and described, and hence its potential benefit to human society and the environment is never known. The collection is also critically important for public health. One of the most relevant connections between the insect collection and the welfare of rural life in Virginia lies in the area of insect borne disease transmission, which is likely to be exacerbated by global climate change that causes range expansions of the many tropical disease vectors northward to Virginia. Insect and arthropod-borne diseases such as Cache Valley Fever, La Crosse Encephalitis, West Nile Virus, Avian Influenza, Chikungunya, Chagas, and Dengue are known from the eastern U.S. Novel arthropod-vectored diseases, such as the Heartland Virus, have recently been discovered in the southeastern U.S. The Virginia Tech Insect Collection is crucial as a resource to identify these harmful disease-carrying arthropods, determine how long the vector species has been in the state, and as a means to track the expansion, contraction and demography of emerging diseases in the Commonwealth. Currently, entomologists and other scientists are using the collection to address these issues that are crosscutting in relevance from a rural to a global scale. Research use is by the faculty, students and the global scientific community. The collection fulfills a key role in serving as the central reference collection for insect identification requests for the Commonwealth. On average, there are 1,000 requests for identification help each year that necessitate referencing the collection to provide this free service to the public. In addition, the VTEC is a critical resource internationally as a repository of innumerable voucher specimens referenced in scientific articles from the 1900s onward. These specimens must remain accessible if subsequent researchers need to confirm the identity a research organism or validate the results of a study (https://collection.ento.vt.edu/vouchers/). An insect specimen that is housed in a collection and is uncatalogued is only available to in-person visitors, which restricts its scientific use. Digitization permits greater accessibility of the specimens and their data and makes these research materials findable, accessible, and reusable.Relevance to Advancing Virginia, the Region, and the U.S.: This work is critical to Virginia and U.S. agricultural infrastructure to support the study of native beneficial insect biodiversity (e.g., crop pollinators) and to support the prevention of invasive pest species.The College of Agriculture and Life Science, Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station, and Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech supports the collection through salary support of a faculty curator, yearly supply budget, and physical space for the collection on campus. At this moment, however, the Virginia Tech Insect Collection faces challenges that hinder it from fulfilling its central mission. The current organizational limitations of the VTEC, which pose challenges for further collection use, prevents attaining our goal of digitizing the collection's specimens, and networking the collection with other natural history repositories to fulfill a U.S. Federal interagency goal of establishing a nationwide online resource for biological collections. Despite its secure centralized location on Virginia Tech's campus, new storage infrastructure, and environmentally stabilized space, large portions of the insect collection are severely disorganized and lack accurate identifications. Additionally, 85% of the collection's specimens have never been cataloged. In 2014 and 2015, the collection was moved from substandard conditions at Prices Fork Research Facility (5 km west of campus) to a new location near the Department of Entomology in Seitz Hall on campus. The collection was rehoused into new archival storage cabinets and Cornell drawers. We have employed a method (best practices: https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/Digitization_Resources) for digitizing specimens, which includes label data capture and cataloging the data on public data repositories including Symbiota Collections of Arthropods (https://scan-bugs.org/portal/index.php), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In collaboration with Virginia Tech Libraries, we have a method in development for digitizing insect specimens using three-dimensional photogrammetry (http://www.ijdc.net/article/view/588). From our efforts over the past five years, we have experienced increased requests for data and specimens from the collection, and now fulfill about 1,000 requests each year (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SBZVGE1eIdmn9a0yHsUtL089o6GhhJ7FJDTHfVryuWQ/edit?usp=sharing). Several successful outreach events in the department thrive, including BugFest and a new VTEC Curriculum Kit for teachers introduced this last year.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
To improve the infrastructure and scientific reach of the Virginia Tech Insect Collection, we propose to (1) update and organize the collection, (2) digitize and database the pinned insect collections, and (3) network the collections data with other biological collections through publicly accessible sources on the Internet. To fulfill the aims of this project, we will systematically organize specimens according to current taxonomic classification, identify specimens in the collection to species, install a high-resolution digitization system, and digitize and catalog the insect holdings according to the data principles of F.A.I.R. (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability). We will collaborate with national initiatives and other scientific collections on campus (e.g., the herbarium, geology, nematode, and vertebrate collections). By making these improvements, the availability of nearly a half million insect specimens will be assured, and collections data including species images and label data publicly shared online for entomologists and other scientists to use.Outreach. Digitization of the collection permits greater accessibility of the specimens and their data and makes them available to a broader audience--both scientifically and publicly. This Hatch proposal also aims to enhance participation of the community in the entomological research of the collection. The public engagement component of the project will include student workers, visitors, workshops, and a museum volunteer program. Because many of these students and visitors coming from Virginia Tech and surrounding rural areas are from underrepresented groups, the potential to transform perception of science, entomology and the significance of insects and biodiversity is considerable.
Project Methods
Objective 1: Update and Organize the CollectionOverview: This objective focuses on improving the organizational infrastructure of the insect collection to provide a basis for digitizing specimens. Insect specimens are currently in urgent need of organization. For example, the Diptera (e.g., house flies, mosquitoes) collection is well organized so that specimens of a species or other taxonomic rank are grouped together. In contrast, the Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) were never organized.Methods: The main focus of this objective is to organize the pinned insect collection. To accomplish this task, we will begin with organization of the Lepidoptera (ca. 40,000 specimens), which is among the most disorganized section of the collection. During the process, insects will be identified and reorganized. The steps required to accomplish this objective are as follows: (a) benchmark the current physical organizational status of the pinned Lepidoptera collection using McGinley (1989, 1993) protocols, (b) establish a species list of the Lepidoptera, (c) identify specimens to species, and (d) group specimens together according taxonomic rank (e.g. species, genera, families, etc.).Phases: Identifying specimens will be the most time-consuming step of this project, followed by digitizing and databasing the specimens (see below in Objective 2). Based on a task analysis, we estimated that the time required to identify a species by an entomologist is an average of seven minutes per specimen. The time requirement indicates that it will require one person 583 hours to identify the entire Lepidoptera collection of unknown specimens (5,000 specimens total). With a team of two people dedicated to the project, the task can be accomplished in 14 weeks.Summary of preliminary work: Using the McGinley (1989, 1993) set of quality criteria for profiling the physical condition of the collection, we have now recorded the curation status of drawers in the Lepidoptera collection. The McGinley method ranks individual drawers using a quality ranking system from one (i.e. the poorest condition, with rusted pins, etc.) to eight (the best condition without conservation problems and specimens sorted and identified to species, digitized and databased). Based on our survey, we found that most drawers received a McGinley rank of three, indicating no conservation problems but the drawer contains material not sorted and identified to species and remains uncatalogued. We plan to improve the collection to a point where all drawers receive a McGinley rank of eight.Objective 2: Digitize and Database the Pinned Insect CollectionsOverview: The 200,000 pinned insect specimens in the collection represent the main share of the VTEC. Among the specimens, there are numerous subcollections that are among the largest in the eastern U.S. and contain rare and unique specimens. However, most of these specimens are not catalogued. As part of this Hatch Project, our research group will digitally catalog the Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Diptera pinned dried insect specimens (120,000 specimens). The scientific justification for digitizing and databasing specimen level data contained in biocollections has been described in recent research and has played a major role in the recent increases in funding for collection digitization and computerization (Baird, 2010; IWGSC, 2009; Lavoie, 2013; Scoble, 2010; Ward, 2012).In 2010, federal agencies and the scientific community gathered to develop a "Strategic Plan for Establishing a Network Integrated Biocollections Alliance" (NIBA). The plan identifies an urgent need to collectively digitize the nation's biological collections and mobilize and network these data through the Internet (https://www.idigbio.org/content/network-integrated-biocollections-alliance-niba).In addition to the pinned insects, there are 50,000 specimens preserved on glass slides, and 20,000 specimens preserved in alcohol. The slide collection makes up a significant portion of the collection and includes an agriculturally important reference collection. The alcohol preserved specimens include the myriapod collection from Appalachia and global locations over the past 15 years. The myriapod collection is the fastest growing component of the VTEC and is the focus of PI Marek's entomology laboratory. The myriapod collection is currently being used to describe 50 new species of millipedes that were primarily collected from Virginia and the Appalachian Region.Methods: As part of this Hatch Project, our research group will digitize and computerize the Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Diptera pinned dried insect specimens (120,000 specimens). To accomplish this task, specimens and their associated labels will be photographically digitized using a microphotography setup, including a color separation chart and millimeter scale. The steps required to accomplish this objective are as follows: (a) specimens will be digitized via a two-person team consisting of a specimen preparator and photographer; (b) specimen label information will then be transcribed into the SCAN database; (c) using Geolocate version 3.0, specimen geographical coordinates will be georeferenced; and (d) specimen-level data will be saved in the online SCAN database and be continuously downloaded and backed up through CrashPlan: Cloud Data Backup.Phases: The digitization and databasing steps requires the most time and will be accomplished by year five of this project. Undergraduate students enrolled in research credit with P. Marek, as part of the Entomology Department's minor, will assist in digitization and databasing. Based on a task analysis and time trials conducted on a portion of the collection, we found that it requires an average of five minutes per specimen to digitize, database and georeference. From this estimate, we gauge the time necessary for this component is 250 weeks for the dried pinned collection.Summary of preliminary work: Timed trials on a subset of the collection comprising 8,000 specimens have generated our time estimate. This component will be conducted simultaneously with organizing the Lepidoptera collection (from Objective 1).Objective 3: Network the Collections Data with other Biological Collections Through Publicly Accessible Sources on the InternetOverview: In this objective, we propose to link VTEC specimen data with other natural history collections to contribute to a collections data network across the nation. A networked and unified U.S. biocollections resource will serve Virginia as well as the nation to address major questions about agriculture, biodiversity, environment, public health, global climate change, and the interstate movement of major invasive pests. The steps required to accomplish this objective are as follows: (a) once specimens are photographed and computerized we will conduct quality control steps to identify incomplete, misspelled, or missing entries in database entries; (b) collections staff will clean data and correct; and (c) data will be uploaded to SCAN and iDigBio data repositories for accessibility to the public.Methods: As specimens are photographed, georeferenced and databased, these data will be continuously uploaded into the biocollections data repositories including iDigBio, which is publicly searchable online at: www.idigbio.org/portal. Biodiversity data in VTEC will conform to the Darwin Core standard, which was established to make data fields comparable, interoperable, and speed unification of data from disparate sources (Wieczorek et al., 2012).Phases: Our targeted date for completion of computerization and networking is 2025. At this time, we expect the Lepidoptera collection to be organized, identified, and prepared for digitization.Summary of preliminary work: As specimens are computerized, these data will immediately be uploaded into the iDigBio biodiversity data server and will be fully searchable online.