Invasives will be caught on screen for all to see

Print More

By KEVIN DUFFY
Capital News Service
LANSING – Michigan researchers are building a time machine to fight freshwater invasive species.
The project will let them navigate through a 150-year historical collection of plants and animals largely hidden among the storerooms of Great Lakes museums.
A $2.5 million federal grant will help move their collections from cupboards and shelves to a computer database through a process called digitization. Plant and animal specimens will be labeled and photographed for online access.

spawningreef

This digitized hydrilla, an aquatic invasive, will be added to the online collection. Credit: University of Wisconsin Herbarium.


A cooperative of 28 Great Lakes universities, including 11 in Michigan, will bypass the need for research staff to spend hours in a collection room pulling samples of North American fish, plants and mollusks.

The project will allow online access to more than 1.7 million specimens, including 2,500 species, said Ken Cameron, who is leading the project and is director of the Wisconsin State Herbarium.
The digital collection will focus on Great Lakes non-native species but will include all species previously collected in North America.
These include ones that are seen as threats and relatives of species that have already caused serious ecological harm, said Cameron.
The project also relies on the resources of small collections, which are “largely underrepresented in the national digitization work,” said Anna Monfils, director of the CMC Herbarium at Central Michigan University.
About 12.5 percent of the nation’s plant specimens are contained within small collections, she said. Eighty-three percent of herbarium collections in the U.S. are small, meaning they have less than 100,000 specimens each.
Monfils represents a group of smaller in-state institutions involved in the digitization effort: Grand Valley State University, Albion College, Eastern Michigan University, Hope College, Western Michigan University, Hillsdale College, Seney National Wildlife Refuge, Calvin College and Andrews University.
spawningreef

Three-dimensional specimens like this fish will be added to the digital collection. Credit: Field Museum.


“Small collections represent local biodiversity well, filling the holes in data that larger, national institutions can’t account for,” she said.
The database will allow people to distinguish between similar looking species, like the Eurasian watermilfoil and other native milfoils, said Andrew Hipp, the project’s outreach coordinator and herbarium coordinator at the Morton Arboretum near Chicago.
A Michigan invasive, the Eurasian milfoil invades freshwater quickly, outcompeting native freshwater plants.
But the project’s main beneficiaries are researchers.
They will be able to identify a species’ initial foothold and the direction of its spread. This will help researchers to document patterns of invasion, contributing to future management of potentially threatening species, said Hipp.
For instance, researchers can find an invader like purple loosestrife and pinpoint where the wetlands perennial was found before 1950. When compared to all known specimens from 1950 to 1980, they can begin to see the direction of spread.
Digitizing images of plants is straightforward, Cameron said. They are flattened on sheets of paper, placed on a light box and photographed from above.
The challenge comes with three-dimensional objects like fish, which are generally preserved in jars of alcohol. These jars contain up to 50 specimens, including males, females, juveniles and adults, he said.
Cameron is working with museum partners to standardize the procedure, especially animal specimens that must be photographed from several angles.
He advocates that museums digitize each image with a metric ruler and color card to account for size and the resolution difference on computer screens.
This procedure also includes geo-referencing, which provides the location of where a specimen was collected.
It requires computer software and bit of human patience. But it’s important because it allows researchers to identify where the species was introduced and where it’s moved, Cameron said.
Cameron says the project’s focus is maintaining the integrity of the historical record.
“We’re like a time machine in that we have records going back 150 years, tracking species through time and space, which in terms of invasives can be very important,” he said.
While no new specimens will be collected or photographed for the project, the digital record will verify reports of where they are found.
“Oftentimes, reports of occurrences are not backed up by a physical voucher or specimen, and that’s what we do in these museums – we preserve the actual occurrence, not just a rumor,” Cameron said.
The digital collections share data collected by state agencies and a database operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hipp said, “The main objective is getting specimen data to the public – providing a shared data portal that extends this resource to professional users and students and especially to those outside the research spectrum.”
Hipp is developing curriculum for K-12 teachers that will allow students to use images to learn about invasives.
But the digital database also supplements research.
For example, geo-referenced images in the database can be tied to a historical record that might suggest how a species physically changed over time, said Rochelle Sturtevant, a Michigan Sea Grant Extension educator based in Ann Arbor.
Invasive species and their close cousins will be added to the national database called Integrated Digitized Biocollections, otherwise known as iDigbio.
Sturtevant said, “If it was only about getting a hold of species’ pictures, one would have to question the value of the project. But it’s in the comparison of species over time and location that we begin to see the value. We no longer have to dig through background collections – we’ve provided open access.”
Kevin Duffy writes for Great Lakes Echo.
Editor’s note: Story updated Nov. 18, 2014

Comments are closed.