The Royal Saskatchewan Museum bee collection: One of the largest most diverse in Canada

Natural history museums are scientific institutions which house preserved specimens from the natural world (e.g., animals, plants, fungi, geological and paleontological). The Royal Saskatchewan Museum’s (RSKM) Invertebrate Zoology department houses specimens mainly from Saskatchewan, but also much of Canada, with some international material – the more recent focus of research is bees (Hymenoptera: Anthophila) of Canada. One of the goals for the RSKM is to continue to build the collection of Canadian/North American bee specimens through collaboration with researchers in partnerships from across the country, as well as contributing to science through research by specialists and students working at the museum. The databased material in the Hymenoptera collection at the RSKM has increased in size by over 150 x in the last decade, with well over 850 species of bees and 550 species of wasps. This is due to extensive collecting by RSKM personnel, as well as collaborations with colleagues in British Columbia and the Territories. The collection of specimens at the RSKM are databased, identified by specialists, and carefully curated and housed in the collections at the RSKM. These collections are then used by in-house specialists as well as taxonomists across Canada and North America when doing taxonomic and other forms of research on bees and wasps of North America.

Digitizing legacy material from the wild bees of Montana project

The Montana Entomology Collection houses an estimated 75,000 digitized bee specimens. An additional 6,500 specimens are legacy specimens from historic collections resulting from decades-old fieldwork. Digitizing these specimens will make these records available not only for faunistic work in Montana, but also to fill distributional gaps for North American bee species. To digitize them, we applied a low-cost approach allowing for simultaneous label data capture and photography of specimens.

Got parasites? We do! The Illinois Natural History Survey’s workflows for the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker TCN using TaxonWorks

Background: The Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) Insect Collection is one of the oldest and largest entomological collections in North America. In 2019, we began to digitize our parasitic insect and arthropod collections to contribute to the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker Thematic Collections Network (TPT). At that time, we were transitioning to a new biodiversity informatics management system called TaxonWorksTM, created and developed by the taxonomists and engineers of the Species File Group, an endowed group also supported by the National Science Foundation.
Purpose: This poster aims to showcase some of the TaxonWorks workflows used by the INHS Insect Collection to digitize parasite specimens as our contribution to the Terrestrial Parasite Tracker TCN project. The workflows highlighted in the poster include the following tasks: Comprehensive Specimen Digitization, New Image, and Grid Digitizer.
Conclusion: Many of these tasks allowed us to remain vigilant in our digitization efforts from home during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown due to TaxonWorks’ accessibility. We are still using these workflows today to continue digitizing parasite specimens. Currently, the INHS Insect Collection has digitized over 73,000 specimens for the TPT TCN project using the aforementioned workflows in TaxonWorks. The TaxonWorks community is still growing and may be able to assist other collections’ projects and needs.

NATALIE DALE-SKEY

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON, UK

A few treasures from the Natural History Museum, London Chalcidoidea collection

Specimens in museum collections can be valuable for a variety of reasons other than their scientific importance – such as their link to important historical figures or their cultural value. The poster will showcase some specimens from the Chalcidoidea collection at the London Natural History Museum which, though they might never figure in a taxonomic article, deserve some time in the limelight.

ALYSSA CAYWOOD¹, MAISIE BUNTIN¹, JULIA COLBY¹, CHRISTOPHER TYRELL¹ & JENNIFER ZASPEL¹

¹MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM, MILWAUKEE, WI, U.S.A.

Show and tell: Finding other ways of knowing in digitized specimens

In 2021, the Milwaukee Public Museum created a new interactive experience in their Butterflies Alive gallery space, which is designed for children. A curiosity cabinet displays model specimens of Wisconsin insects and their associated plants, including: the rusty patched bumblebee, common cattail, purple prairie clover, butterfly weed, the Luna moth, monarch butterfly, ebony jewel wing damselfly, cabbage white butterfly, red pine, pixie cup lichen, and the scarlet lichen moth.

Visitors are invited to match the model specimens’ barcode number to a button on the desk below. When a button is pressed, the digitized records associated with the specimen along with label data and more information about the organism is displayed on a screen mounted above the cabinet. This screen also displays a short informational video about why museum specimens are critical for generating new knowledge. Thus far, a significant portion of the exhibit content has been translated into the two most frequent second languages in Wisconsin, Spanish and Hmong, and is available to visitors as laminated booklets on the cabinet’s desk. In addition to expanding these translations to Indigenous languages, we also plan to produce additional educational materials that will focus on Indigenous ways of knowing plants and insects in Wisconsin. To accomplish this, we are partnering with members of Wisconsin Indigenous communities to determine which species to feature in the newly translated materials, and suggest other plant or insect species that would enrich the storytelling and provide other perspectives on what it’s like to share the Wisconsin landscape with these organisms.

ASHLEIGH WHIFFIN¹ & VLADIMIR BLAGODEROV¹

¹NATIONAL MUSEUMS SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK

From moth trap to museum: Digitising the collection & archive of Edward Pelham-Clinton

Edward Charles Pelham-Clinton (1920-1988), a former curator at National Museums Scotland, made substantial contributions to British Entomology during his lifetime. With a focus on Lepidoptera, he devoted 53 years to collecting and recording, compiling one of the most comprehensive collections of British moths (35,600 specimens).Pelham-Clinton’s collection is frequently consulted by the moth recording community, and of particular interest is his accompanying archive. He developed a bespoke recording system and kept the most meticulous notes of his findings, not just noting details of those that he collected, but also all his observations too. This wealth of information is contained within 64 field diaries.

Due to the significance of his archive, a digitisation project was initiated during the pandemic. Drawers containing his specimens have now been photographed and 17,000 pages from his field diaries have been scanned. With the help of volunteers, transcription is now in progress, and we aim to mobilise more than 160,000 moth observations.

MAXWELL BARCLAY¹, MICHAEL GEISER¹, DMITRY TELNOV¹ & KEITA MATSUMOTO¹

¹NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON, UK.

The Coleoptera collections of the Natural History Museum, London

The collections and the present collections management staff of the Coleoptera Section of the Natural History Museum, London are introduced. Projects to make the collections more comprehensive and more accessible to the scientific community are discussed. Entomologist visitors to the collections are enthusiastically welcomed.

COLIN FAVRET

UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL, MONTREAL, QC, CANADA.

Micropublications in taxonomy and natural history

Two new journals, bilingual and open access, publish short articles focusing on natural history specimens. These specimens are held in collection and their collection data published in machine-readable format and therefore acquired by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Micropublications (two pages maximum) at Specimen are peer-reviewed and publish new geographical, morphological, and biological interaction records, new species, and catalogs, always based on specimens. Non-peer-reviewed articles at Collection publish data from recently preserved specimen sets, e.g., voucher specimens supporting ecological research, specimen donations received by a museum, collection specimens recently re-curated. Authors sought are primarily amateur natural historians, students, researchers with small one-off contributions, and anyone who interacts with natural history specimens.

DAVID YUAN AND NICOLE FISHER

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL INSECT COLLECTION, CSIRO, Canberra, AUStralia.

Primary Type Management and Digitisation: Manage, Digitise and Sequence the primary type specimens in the Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC).

Three independent initiatives were pulled together to concentrate efforts across the collection, digitisation and molecular genomics teams. The resulting program is capitalising on synergistic efforts to enable the setting of new taxonomic standards for globally relevant specimens.

HELEN WAGNER¹, JESSICA QUINONES¹, MICHAEL RAMON¹, GABRIEL PEREZ¹, KRISTIAN LOPEZ¹, DR. ANDRE DA COSTA DA SILVA¹, DR. ANTHONY BELLANTUONO¹, DR. SPARKLE MALONE¹ & DR. MATTHEW DEGENNARO¹

¹FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, MIAMI, FL, U.S.A. 

Proposal: Addressing mosquito population dynamics in South Florida with geographic distribution and genomic variation analysis using a community- based mosquito surveillance program 

Populations of Aedes aegypti, the main vector for dengue virus transmission and other infectious diseases, are expanding throughout Florida due to the state’s tropical and subtropical climate. In Florida, the exposure of insecticides is not evenly distributed through every county, potentially generating genetic diversity in target populations of Ae. aegypti. The aims of this project include analysis of Ae. aegypti whole genomes in order to determine the level of genetic variance in Florida. Currently, low levels of genetic variability have been observed throughout South Florida. Using the AaegL5 version of the reference genome, Ae. aegypti whole genomes could serve as a potent tool to reveal different levels of gene flow and variability. After studying the interactions between the spatial patterns of my data and the ecological covariates, I can apply some of the landscape ecology methods to look for interactions between landscape features and my genomic data. A preliminary boosted regression tree model shows Vegetation and Land Surface Temperature as the main contributors to the model for mosquito infestation based on egg density indices. A Principal Component Analysis will be the next step to process Ae. aegypti genetic diversity. The relationship between genetic discontinuities and environmental features is a key component of understanding gene flow and population genetic structure through landscape genetics, and studying both will allow for the identification of genetic patterns within South Florida. The resulting information can provide vector control management programs with knowledge on the influence of mosquito expansion throughout the state to calculate vector capacity.