Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN): A Model for Collections Digitization to Promote Taxonomic and Ecological Research

The Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) project brings together arthropod collections at universities and museums from the Southwest and beyond to create a virtual information network of arthropod occurrences. This web site is the central data portal for the SCAN project. It is hosted at the University of Florida iDigBio data center. All other information about the SCAN project can be found at our project website: http://scan1.acis.ufl.edu/, including How-To-Guides and network updates.

The primary focus of our NSF-ADBC funding is to develop an online occurrence database of regional ground-dwelling arthropod species. Additionally, we have made our online data website available for storing occurrence data for any arthropod group. We hope this will initiate the creation of other important data portals, including a North American Arthropod Database and more focused thematic data portals for specific taxa (e.g., weevils) and geographically-delineated portals.

We are using Symbiota (a web-based collections database system designed by Ed Gilbert) to power the SCAN portal. Symbiota is also used for several other digitization of museum collections projects such as the Southwest Environmental Information Network (SEINet), the Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment Project, the Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria and several others. Please refer to Symbiota (tutorials) and our more specific “insect” tutorials for entering and managing collection data as well as using the data for research and education.

The key features of all Symbiota databases include

1. Easy web-based data entry
2. Download entire datasets in two clicks
3. Map georeferenced records in two clicks
4. Upload high-resolution images & create species profile pages
5. Design custom species lists for any locality at multiple scales (in progress)
6. Develop educational games with data
7. Create taxonomic keys

The key organizational feature is that each museum or project is listed as a separate collection, so that one database group does not interfere with another and yet from the end user side they can select all “collections” or just a subset. In the future we hope to serve observational data as well as museum specimen data.

The project members will work with an existing software project called Filtered Push that enhances the capacity of far-flung experts to contribute identifications and annotations of data that may be shared across the network.

The comprehensive SCAN online library and expert information will be available to the public as well as to professionals in taxonomy, ecology, and climate change science.