Recent digitization efforts in the natural history museum community worldwide are providing ecologists access to an enormous amount of data. At present, this data resource appears largely untapped by the ecology community. Biological collection specimen data and literature have the potential to both expand and enrich many different kinds of ecological research analyses. For example, historical data from museum specimens can inform range prediction (forward and backward-casting), IUCN assessment, paleoecological insights into our future by looking at response to past climate change as seen in fossil data, and inform community and habitat restoration based on past community evidence. Museum specimen data and related documentation provide valuable information for understanding food webs, pollination, symbiosis, parasitism and herbivory, phenology, and predicting adaptation, or the potential for failure to adapt, to global change.
Results/Conclusions
Biological collections data are not perfect (what data are?). For example, information might be missing or duplicated. Analytical models are in use that help to account for data gaps, potential and actual collecting bias, and duplicate records. Data aggregators like iDigBio (https://www.idigbio.org), and GBIF (http://www.gbif.org/), offer millions of specimen records. These data records link to physical vouchered specimens. Specimen records include taxonomic identification information and are often georeferenced. We plan to discuss some of the challenges collections face when digitizing specimen collections materials. How do ecologists discover these data exist? How can they contribute to, or enhance, the available data? What biodiversity informatics skills and knowledge are useful for incorporating these data into ecological research? This presentation will address these issues, and provide examples of current ecological research using collections data.