Plants, Herbivores, and Parasitoids A Model System for the study of Tri-Trophic Associations

1. Plants, Herbivores, and ParasitoidsA Model System for the study of Tri-Trophic Associations NSF ADBC Digitization TCN Melissa Tulig, Toby Schuh & Rob Naczi

2. TCN Partners This project could not have been put together without an amazing team of people. Entomology • Toby Schuh, American Museum of Natural History • Christine Johnson, American Museum of Natural History • Christiane Weirauch, University of California, Riverside • John Heraty, University of California, Riverside • Charles Bartlett, University of Delaware • Benjamin Normark, University of Massachusetts, Amherst • Neal Evenhuis, BP Bishop Museum, Honolulu • David Kavanaugh ,California Academy of Sciences • Stephen D. Gaimari ,California Dept. Food and Agriculture • Chen Young, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg • Boris C. Kondratieff, Colorado State University • James K. Liebherr, Cornell University • Dmitry Dmitriev, Illinois Natural History Survey • Richard Brown, Mississippi State University • Andy Deans, North Carolina State University • David Maddison, Oregon State University • John Oswald, Texas A&M University • Kipling Will, University of California, Berkeley • Caroline Chaboo , University of Kansas • Michael Sharkey , University of Kentucky Data Contributors • Canadian National Collection, Ottawa • University of California, Davis • Kansas State University Botany • Robert Magill, Missouri Botanical Garden • Robert Naczi, New York Botanical Garden • Richard Rabeler, University of Michigan • Melissa Tulig, New York Botanical Garden • Margaret Koopman, Eastern Michigan University • Loy Phillippe, Illinois Natural History Survey • Deborah Lewis, Iowa State University • Michael Vincent, Miami University • Timothy Hogan, University of Colorado • Mary Ann Feist, University of Illinois • Craig Freeman, University of Kansas • Christopher Cambell, University of Maine • Anita Cholewa, University of Minnesota • Beryl Simpson, University of Texas • Kenneth Cameron, University of Wisconsin Data Contributors • Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria • Consortium of California Herbaria • Southwest Biodiversity Consortium

3. 30 Institutions across the US

4. A Tri-Trophic Example Crop Plants (Solanaceae) Aphids (Hemiptera) Parasitoids Plants Insect Herbivores Parasitic wasps (Hymenoptera) Herbivory causes yellowing of leaves, curled leaves, stunted growth, wilting, low harvesting yields and death of the plant Pierce stems and leaves to feed on the plants – specialize on one species or numerous species Lay eggs directly inside the aphids and consume them from the inside out

5. A Tri-Trophic Approach About 85% of Hemiptera are herbivorous with high host specificity for many large plant families (Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae) Hempitera are serious agricultural pests (armored scales, mealy bugs, potato leafhoppers, Lygus bugs) Vectors of viral and bacterial diseases (Green peach aphid is a vector of over 100 plant viruses) Parasitic Hymenoptera are very beneficial as biological control agents The relationship between these groups is of significant ecological and economic importance

6. Species Coverage for the North American Biota Bugs Plants

7. Bugs Specimen Digitization

8. Plants Specimen Digitization

9. Project management • Steering Committee of 10 PIs • Toby Schuh (AMNH) Committee Chair • First TCN meeting Oct. 29-30th in NY • Full-time Project Manager at AMNH • Daily project management, training of entomology partners, & centralized georeferencing • Full-time Project Coordinator at NYBG • Training of botany partners, barcoding of NY specimens and database all herbarium specimens for all partner institutions • Digitization assistants • Hourly staff at all partner institutions to image or database specimens

10. Infrastructure Use existing infrastructure for hardware and software at each institution Each institution will use existing databases and imaging stations or share with partner institutions Use existing Storage Area Networks at NYBG & AMNH (Mirror the PBI AMNH database at UCR) Use an existing web portal for data integration (Discover Life) as modeled by AMNH’s NSF PBI Plants & Bugs project, plus send copies to iDigBio, GBIF & other networks Looking forward to working with solutions and tools developed by iDigBio & others

11. Plants

12. Specimens are barcoded, given a filed as name, and imaged at partner institutions Image files are sent to NY Each image file gets a database record with the institution, barcode number, filed as determination, and preliminary OCR of the label Using Tropicos from Missouri Botanical Garden as our names authority file NY Project Coordinator completes the partial records Send DarwinCore to DiscoverLife and back to each partner institution Plants Workflow

13. Imaging Station – 90 specimens/hour

14. How do we complete & georeference 1,200,000+ partial records? Send image files through SALIX/HERBIS Merge existing partner datasets and expect duplicates Scatter, Gather, Reconcile; FilteredPush Crowd sourcing & citizen scientists Georeferencing tools: GEOLocate, BioGeomancer & others All ideas welcome!

15. Bottlenecks • Curation • Outdated names, specimens of the same species filed under more than one name • Combined data • Duplicates and differing names – how to know which is correct, how to report discrepancies back to home institutions • File transfer • What’s the best way to move 1,000,000 images to NY? • Long-term archival image storage for all institutions? • Potentially 36+ TB of raw files

16. Bugs

17. Bugs Workflow • Organize specimens by collection event • Pin barcodes to each specimen • Perform data entry for all specimens • Take close up images of representative specimens of every species AMNH Matrix-code labels

18. Databasing Use existing online PBI database for most data entry

19. Streamlined Interface for Rapid Data Entry • Taxon names • Locality data • Collection Events • Specimen Data • Host names

20. Voucher specimen Collection site Living host plant Link directly to host plant images

21. Imaging • Image representative specimens for each species • Use existing imaging stations at partner institutions • About 30% of Hemiptera are complete • Expect to produce about 20,000 new images

22. Combine datasets in Discover Life • PBI database is already set up as a data provider to Discover Life • Generates species pages that include specimen data, maps, and images • Creates a linkage between host/parasite/parasitoid data • Updates PBI data every 24 hours to deliver up-to-date information

23. What can be done with these 4,000,000+ combined data records? Conservation biology: management decision making Systematics: species distributions Biogeography: large data pool for studies of endemism Ecology: host-herbivore-parasitoid relationships and origins Agricultural sciences: invasive/pest species data and management, identifications at ports Climate change studies: ecological niche modeling; phenological changes; distributional changes

24. Thank you, NSF! Contact Us Toby Schuh (schuh@amnh.org) Rob Naczi (rnaczi@nybg.org) Melissa Tulig (mtulig@nybg.org)