Digitization of the Illinois Natural History Survey insect collection

Dmitry Dmitriev

INHS Image Archive

INHS Insect Collection: Overview

• One of the oldest and most comprehensive insect collections in North America

• 9th largest collection in the USA (~7 million prepared specimens)

• >13,000 primary type specimens

Brief History

• Establishment of the Natural History Society of Illinois (1858)

INHS Image Archive

Brief History of INHS: Early Era (1857-1875)

• 1858 - Establishment of Natural History Society at Illinois Normal University, by small group of active members including Cyrus Thomas, John Powell, Benjamin Walsh, and Stephen Forbes

• 1861 - 60,000 specimens in the collection Cyrus Thomas

John PowellIllinois Normal UniversityOldest specimen in the collection

Expansion Era, 1875-1922

• 1877 - INHS renamed as State Laboratory of Natural History with Stephen Forbes as first director

• 1885 - State Laboratory moved to Urbana • Original paid staff of seven people• 1903 - Charles Hart (true bugs) appointed as first

entomology curator, and assistant curator John Malloch (flies)

University Hall, Urbana, ca. 1870Charles Hart and field party near

Havana, IL, 1894

Natural History Museum, Urbana, 1917

Stephen A. Forbes

Era of Comprehensive Faunistic Treatments 1923-1950’s

Under Theodore Frison and Herbert Ross• Systematics of Illinois fauna • Illinois Natural History Survey

Bulletins• Plecoptera (stoneflies)• Megaloptera (fishflies)• Ephemeroptera (mayflies)• Trichoptera (caddisflies)• Thysanoptera (thrips)

• Other groups covered by visiting entomologists:

• Aphids (F.C. Hottes, T. Frison)• Plant bugs (H.H. Knight)• Leafhoppers (D.M. DeLong)

• 1958 - 2 million specimens by 100th anniversary

Herbert Ross, 1935

Sanderson & Stannard, 1953

Theodore Frison

Era of Globalization, 1950’s-present

Extensive globalization of collecting efforts, many funded by NSF

North America• Herbert Ross

• Caddisflies, leafhoppers, other insects Central America/Caribbean Islands

• Milton Sanderson• Coleoptera• Dominican amber

• Wallace LaBerge, beesWorldwide

• Donald Webb, Diptera• Michael Irwin, Diptera• Christopher Dietrich, Hemiptera

(leafhoppers)• Felipe Soto-Adames, Collembola• Kevin Johnson, Psocodea• Ed DeWalt (aquatic insects)• David Voegtlin (aphids)• Willliam Ruesink (Coleoptera)• George Godfrey (Lepidoptera)

• China, 2010

• Mexico, 2005 • Argentina, 2008

Globally-represented groups

• Collembola (springtails) • Coleoptera (beetles)• Diptera (true flies)• Hemiptera (leafhoppers)• Hymenoptera (bees)• Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies)• Plecoptera (stoneflies)• Psocodea (parasitic lice and barklice)• Thysanoptera (thrips)• Trichoptera (caddisflies)

INHS Image Archive

Contributions of private collections• Charles Robertson: insects visiting flowers near Carlinville

(1884-1914)• Murray Glenn: Microlepidoptera (1927-1976)• Andreas Bolter (all orders)• Emil Bees (Lepidoptera)• C.L. Metcalf (flower flies)• W.P. Hayes (weevils)• A.D. MacGillivray (sawflies)• P.N. Musgrave (water beetles)• K.F. Auden (beetles)

Charles Robertson Murray Glenn

Patrick Conway: Lepidoptera, 2009

William Rose: Coleoptera, 2011

The Present: Digital Age

slide mounted specimens ethanol-preserved specimens

pinned specimens

• Specimen-level electronic database, 1990’s• NSF funded projects

• Digitize label data• Retrospective georeferenced localities• Accessible via GBIF portal

• Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera• Hymenoptera• Central Asian grassland fauna• Microleafhoppers• Orthoptera

NSF Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC) Goals

• digitize 1 billion specimens in 10 years for $100 million ($0.10/specimen)

• build Thematic Collection Networks (TCNs) to address specific research goals

• link TCNs under national HUB

Tri-Trophic Thematic Collection Network

• AMNH – lead organization• 34 participating museums

(including INHS).• The goals to capture label data

for herbivorous Hemiptera (aphids, scales, hoppers, cicadas, and true bugs), their host plants and parasitic wasps.

• ~200,000 INHS specimens entered to the database

Collection curation

FileMaker

SQL Server

Online data entry form

INHS Insect collection digitization workflow

•Nomenclature•Unit tray labelwith taxon code

Storage unit profiling

Slide scanning

•Parsing data (automatic, crowd sourcing, etc.)

•Georeferencing

GBIF

Collection size: ~7,000,000 specimens

Digitized: ~2,000,000 specimens (~800,000 records)

Parsing verbatim labels

•Matching with existing parsed records (~40% match)

•Finding date (~80% records)

•Finding collector (~70% records)

•Finding identifier (~30% records)

•Student parsing

•Crowd-sourcing (have not been tested yet).

Collection curation

Amy Bader

processing loan return

INHS collection profiling

(Colin Favret et al. 2007)

InvertNet• Digitize all holdings of 22 arthropod collections (>50 million

specimens)• Provide access to images and other data via online virtual

museum• Provide platform for research and development of additional

tools and resources

• Custom designed precision robotics system

– Integrated and customized for InvertNet

» Captures images of drawer from multiple positions in X, Y, and Z

» Raw images combined to produce single very high resolution2-D image and 3-D reconstruction

Collection digitization: drawers

Collection digitization: drawers

• Delta Robot, digital camera, telecentric lens captures grid of single, close-up images at 40-60 x/y coordinates and 5 perspectives

• Single images stitched to yield Gigapixel images from multiple viewpoints

Top-down view

Angled view

• Enables virtual tilting

Collection digitization: drawers

2. segment unit trays (image analysis software)

3. segment specimens4. capture label data (crowd-sourcing)

1. capture image of drawer + metadata (location, contents)

Collection digitization: drawers

Collection digitization: slides and vials

InvertNet Website

• InvertNet.org

• Registration is open to all and available now; please join!

Fossil insect collaborative.

• A deep time approach to studying diversification and response to environmental change

• 7 collaborative institutions

Fossil insect collaborative.

INHS is processing Milton Sanderson’s Dominican amber collection which was stored in 5 gallon buckets.

Fossil insect collaborative

Amber is being polished, scanned for inclusions, sorted, photographed, and databased.

Termite

Collection Digitization: Global Coverage

2008

2013

Today, ~800,000 records (2 million specimens)

GBiF

http://data.gbif.org/datasets/provider/75

Outreach

C. Dietrich

C. Dietrich

INHS Image Archive

• Annual Prairie Research Institute Expo• Illinois Wilds Institute for Nature (IWIN) courses• Travelling Science Center• INHS published insect field guides

Acknowledgements

•Collaborators:

C. Dietrich, F. Soto-Adames, E. DeWalt, T. Schuh, C. Bartlet, S. Heads, M. Yoder, B. Morris, A. Bader, J. Zahniser.

•All the students who did the hard work.

•NSF for continuous support of INHS digitization efforts.