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1 | Last name | First name | Institution | Title | Abstract | ||||||||||||||
2 | Hanken | James | Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University | The advent of digital technology and its promise for biodiversity research | Recent initiatives aimed at digitizing legacy biodiversity data have been embraced by the corresponding professional community because of their potential to quicken the pace of species discovery and yield novel insights regarding ecological and evolutionary relationships, biotic responses to global climate change, and other compelling areas of basic and applied research. While these are worthy aspirations, they nevertheless underestimate the breadth of promise of digitized data writ large and its potential to yield unanticipated and profound discoveries, such as those that followed comparable “big science” endeavors of past centuries, and even past millennia. Incorporation of additional and more diverse types of digitized biological data, combined with the ever-increasing capacity to rapidly organize, manipulate and analyze massive datasets, will create opportunities for synthetic approaches to research and education that cut across traditional disciplines. Such activities will bring us ever closer to realizing the macroscope, “an imaginary instrument, antithetic to the microscope, which should bring vast regions of the universe within the range of vision.” | ||||||||||||||
3 | Blackburn | David | Florida Musuem of Natural History | 3D Phenotypes for All | The next wave of digitization of scientific collections will enhance existing digital resources, adding diverse media such as images, sounds, and 3D models. In some cases this involves new linkages among existing datasets, but it will also require creating new media associated with physical objects that are already in our collections. The oVert (openVertebrate) Thematic Collections Network is a collaborative initiative among 16 museums across the U.S. to generate, archive, and share digital anatomical data for a majority of the ~10,500 extant vertebrate genera. We are using x-ray computed tomography (CT-scanning) to generate high-resolution three-dimensional datasets for fluid-preserved vertebrate specimens that are freely and publicly available via the online MorphoSource database for research and education. The oVert TCN is also developing best practices and guidelines for high-throughput CT-scanning, including efficient workflows, preferred resolutions, and archival formats that optimize the variety of downstream applications. I will discuss strategies taken by oVert to use existing collections data available via aggregators such as iDigBio to both prioritize specimens for CT-scanning and to build out metadata in other resources such as MorphoSource. The oVert TCN provides one vision for how to facilitate unprecedented global access to the phenotypes represented in our scientific collections. | ||||||||||||||
4 | Mabee | Paula | University of South Dakota | Phenotyped | The four seasons of biocollections - accumulate, organize, digitize, integrate - have yielded a vast enabling data set for researchers. Biocollections serve as a ready source of genomic data, with voucher specimens as containers. Similarly, collections preserve records of environmental and geographic data by virtue of where the specimens were collected. The digital phenotypic data of the specimens themselves, however, are virtually untapped though they set the stage for powerful integration between genes and environment that can address foundational questions in biology. By applying semantics to phenotypes and thereby rendering them computable, many new ‘smart’ applications are enabled. These range from simple – e.g., finding specific phenotypes that were never electronically tagged as such, to complex – e.g., candidate gene hypotheses generated for sets of phenotypes. These and other examples from the Phenoscape project, including the application of semantic phenotypes in the field of phylogenetic systematics, will demonstrate the new opportunities for discovery that are enabled when phenotypes are exposed to machine reasoning. The application of semantics to millions of digitized specimen images in biocollections will create a large phenotyped resource ready to address basic questions concerning e.g., trait distribution and evolution, which are currently difficult to answer at a large scale. | ||||||||||||||
5 | Thau | David | Google Earth Engine and Google Earth Outreach | Biodiversity data and cloud-based analysis tools: A survey of the present and a squint into the future. | In recent years, most of the major cloud computing companies have aimed their cloud technologies toward providing tools to analyze Earth observation data. Google, for example, has made petabytes of satellite and other geospatial data, along with tools to analyze it, freely available to researchers around the world via Google Earth Engine. These data and tools have been used to create impactful datasets and web applications, including multi-decadal studies of global surface water availability and global tree cover change, tools for crop yield estimation, and platforms to fight plagues. There are also great examples of the use of biodiversity data in these kinds of analyses. But not enough! This talk will give a quick overview of the types of large-scale geospatial analyses that have been performed in cloud computing and machine learning environments, with a focus on conservation and biodiversity applications. It will also describe some work in development and will wrap up with a series of questions around what it would take to get more biodiversity data into the mix. | ||||||||||||||
6 | Full | Robert | University of California, Berkeley | Technological Innovation from Museums: Opportunities and Challenges to Bio-inspired Design | Bioinspired Design is becoming a leading paradigm for the development of new technologies that will lead to significant scientific, societal and economic impact in the near future. Museums with biological collections can: 1. Inspire technical innovation by creating new industries never imagined such as fibrillar adhesion by studying diverse geckos toes, smart composite microstructure manufacturing for search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring robots, and new tablet and watch displays using the structural color of butterflies. 2. Guide the most effective selection of organisms for inspiration using scaling, convergence, and identifying constraints and using biodiversity to find extreme or unique solutions. 3. Lead to discovery of novel, translatable biological principles using phylogeny and organismal-environmental linkages to see relationships unobservable without the patterns of diversity. 4. Inspire novel approaches to design by developing key enablers including 3D imaging, dynamic modeling, and additive manufacturing. 5. Facilitate the mutualistic, interdisciplinary collaborations required by building on the already established networks of museums. | ||||||||||||||
7 | Edwards | Scott | Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University | Linking genomes, traits and environment across time and space: a vision for Digitization 2.0 | The first wave of digitization of the world’s global biocollections has spurred a new generation of integrative studies of organismal diversity and has renewed recognition of natural history collections as unsurpassed sources of direct data on the status of organisms and environments at the dawn of the Anthropocene. The urgency of digitizing more diverse data types, for linking diverse data types together, and for capturing larger swaths of the biodiversity represented in museum collections is made plain by the successes of digitization 1.0: undigitized specimens, data types and workflows remain frustratingly out of reach of the cutting-edge of scientific inquiry. Here I outline a vision for Digitization 2.0, based largely on a synthesis of ideas generated during a 2017 convening of the first three cohorts of NSF-funded postdoctoral fellows conducting research using biological collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard. The diversity of collections-based research taking place under this program is breathtaking. The conference also highlighted many areas of the global digitization initiative that could be refined or expanded to better serve biological research, such as distributing the labor of digitization widely and increasing the number of workflows connecting diverse data types across specimens and databases. | ||||||||||||||
8 | Cavender-Bares | Jeannine | University of Minnesota | Deciphering evolutionary legacies on ecosystem function through remote sensing: implications for global change | An open question is whether the structure and function of relatively undisturbed ecosystems are inevitable consequences of climate and geology or whether the idiosyncracies of biogeographic and evolutionary processes, including the order and timing of lineage dispersal and diversification, have led to divergent outcomes in ecosystem function. The ecosystem composition and diversity of plant electromagnetic spectra—the patterns of light absorbed, transmitted, and reflected at different wavelengths from plants—are emerging as important components of biodiversity, alongside functional and phylogenetic components. Spectra contain abundant information about plant function and are tightly coupled to the tree of life. The evolutionary innovations and legacies of biogeographic history that have contributed to modern plant communities and ecosystems may be revealed from the spectral reflectance of plants and from increasingly available remote sensing data that provide environmental information across spatial and temporal scales. Understanding the context in which plants evolved and the role of evolutionary history in current ecosystem structure and function provides insight into how ecosystems will respond to future environmental changes. These insights combined with advancing methods for detecting and monitoring change in biodiversity and ecosystems can help prioritize conservation and inform strategies for maintaining a habitable planet in the face of global change. | ||||||||||||||
9 | Schmidt | Cindy | Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, NASA Ames Research Center | Monitoring Biodiversity from Space | Satellite imagery is an important tool to monitor biodiversity from space because it provides long-term, consistent global coverage. NASA’s Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting programs use satellite and airborne Earth observations to advance the understanding of how and why biological diversity is changing, to analyze and forecast changes that effect ecosystems, and help develop effective resource management strategies. The programs focus on global and regional efforts, such as the contribution of remote sensing measurements to the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), as well as innovative methods to integrate remote sensing data with ground-collected data such as camera traps, e-DNA, and large citizen science-based networks such as eBird. This presentation will highlight some of the key projects from these programs as well as describe planned future satellite missions that will transform our ability to characterize the landscape. | ||||||||||||||
10 | Smith | Dena | U.S. National Science Foundation | Biodiversity Data and an Evolving Funding Landscape | Natural history museums are in a unique position to serve as change-makers. They house foundational biodiversity data, conduct and facilitate cutting edge research, communicate science to a variety of stakeholders and serve as centers of innovation in education and outreach. Presented here are opportunities for biodiversity researchers and museum professionals that are available through the U.S. National Science Foundation. In addition to support from already existing core programs and cross-disciplinary efforts through the Directorates of Biological Sciences, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Education and Human Resources, Geosciences, and the Office of Integrative Activities, there are several newer opportunities that have emerged through the National Science Foundation’s Big 10 Ideas. With an increase in both the quality and quantity of digital data and the development of new tools and techniques, it is an excellent time for the biodiversity research community to develop and lead creative new initiatives that further research, education and outreach and provide the highest quality training to the next generation of museum professionals and community leaders. | ||||||||||||||
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