Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017 - 32

Features
From the Scrub to the Web: Digitizing the Archbold Biological Station
Natural History Collections
Stephanie Leon

There is something paradoxical about working indoors at
a field station. While most of my colleagues are trekking
through the loose soils of the southcentral Florida scrub, I am
inside, turning on my computer and camera and pulling insect
drawers out from their cabinets. My job is to digitize the
biological collection at Archbold Biological Station, a field
station in Florida. This job goes beyond data entry and image
capture; it is a multifaceted project with many extremely
rewarding outcomes.
The collection at Archbold trace back to the Station's origin
in 1941. Its founder, Richard Archbold, was trained in museum traditions and prioritized the development and curation of
an on-site, multi-taxon natural history collection. His legacy
carried on, and today after decades of work by many scientists, curators, and volunteers, over 270,000 specimens make
up the collection. It is a multi-taxon collection with more than
250,000 pinned insect specimens making up the majority,
followed by nearly 5,000 pressed plant specimens, more than
1,400 bird skins, and more than 4,000 specimens of reptiles,
amphibians and fish preserved in jars. Although not a vast
collection, it is very well-curated for a field station. The Archbold collection also serves as a reference, representing one of
the most important records of biodiversity of the region.
Like other collections around the world, Archbold is utilizing
modern technology to make its collection more widely available. In recognition of its significance for science, especially
the breadth of data associated with the specimens, Archbold
was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation
to digitize its collection and publish it online. The digitization process involves transcribing all labels, checking for
accuracy, capturing a digital image for at least one specimen
of each species in our collections, and publishing the data on
taxon-specific portals. This process requires a team of several
people working at a time. We are fortunate to have a number
of volunteers who dedicate hundreds of hours toward the
organization and digitization of our collections. We also have
recruited post-baccalaureate interns who help with digitization. Additionally, the interns conduct independent research
projects which draw from our collections.
Over the past year-and-a-half, my job has focused on overseeing the digitization of the arthropod collection at Archbold. This collection is pretty special and unique. For the past
33 years, Mark Deyrup, the Station's Head Entomologist,
32 * SPNHC Connection

has devoted most of his time to surveying the biodiversity of
arthropods at the station, including sampling flowering plants
from the station and collecting the insects that visited those
plants. This has resulted in over 10,000 records of insects that
visit flowers at the Station. Digitizing our flower-visitor dataset was one of the prioritized objectives during the first year
of our grant. Our other high priority objective is to create a
holdings list of all the species in our collections. Among other
digitization goals within the arthropod collection at Archbold
are the ants of Florida, representing all 239 species found
throuout the state, over 5,000 specimens of microscopic beetles reared from dead wood, and more than 1,000 specimens
representing 93 species endemic to the Florida scrub. To date,
we have completed the digitization of our flower visiting
insect data set. In total, this it is made up of 10,868 records
of insects on flowers. This represents a total of 902 species of
insects that visit flowers at the Station.
One of the most exciting aspects of collections digitization
is seeing the data "in action." As part of his independent
research project, one of our interns, Dylan Ricke, became
interested in pollination networks. Using our collection
data, Dylan looked at two different plants, the saw palmetto
(Serenoa repens) and the yellow hatpins (Syngonanthus
flavidulus), and created a network to illustrate interactions of
different insect species on these plants and highlight potential communities. He also looked at the relationship between
plant size and insect size in bees and wasps among flowervisitors. The results of his findings are preliminary, but an
exciting precursor to the endless questions that can be asked,
and hypotheses that can be formulated from our data.
Outreach is also an important feature of digitizing our collection. We have been able to give public tours of all our collections and demonstrations of our imaging workstation. We
have also been very active on social media and in the local
newspaper, updating the public on our digitizing progress.
Our objective at the broad scale is to make the public aware
of our collections, their activity, and the questions and answers we can draw from the data.
Digitizing the Archbold collection extends beyond entering
data and capturing images. It involves years of methodical
collecting, precise species identification, and curation, all for
the availability of rich, useful data for scientists and other
curious minds. Digitizing our collections has resulted in a
synergistic environment where scientists, interns, students
and the public interact and learn from our collections ...to better understand the buzzing world of the Florida scrub.
Stephanie Leon, Curation Assistant, Archbold Biological Station, and 2017 Fitzergerald Travel Grant awardee.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2017