Speakers: Mason Heberling (heberlingm@carnegiemnh.org) and Bonnie Isaac (isaacb@carnegiemnh.org);
Date: Thursday 11/5/2020
Host: Neil Cobb (neil.cobb@nau.edu or neilscobb@gmail.com)
Summary: Do you ever wish you had field pictures of your specimens? Mason and Bonnie will review how botanists use iNaturalist platform to link iNat images and data with specimen data. They leverage the widely used citizen science platform, iNaturalist, to permanently associate field‐collected images to herbarium specimens, including information not well preserved in traditional specimens. Labels are made using iNaturalist records, which are then linked to specimens directly with QR codes on labels that direct the user back to the iNaturalist record, including field images. This protocol improves the efficiency and accuracy of all steps from the collecting event to specimen curation and enhances the potential uses of specimens. iNaturalist provides a standardized and cost‐efficient enhancement to specimen collection and curation that can be easily adapted for specific research goals or other collection types beyond herbaria.
Link to protocol paper in Applications in Plant Sciences: iNaturalist as a tool to expand the research value of museum specimens
Link to Botanical Society of America talk: Botany 2020 – Virtual presentation
Questions/Comments: iNaturalist as a tool
Related Literature:
Hedrick, B.P., Heberling, J.M., Meineke, E.K., Turner, K.G., Grassa, C.J., Park, D.S., Kennedy, J., Clarke, J.A., Cook, J.A., Blackburn, D.C. and Edwards, S.V., 2020. Digitization and the future of natural history collections. BioScience, 70(3), pp.243-251.
Lendemer J., Thiers B., Monfils A.K., Zaspel, Ellwood E.R., Bentley A., LeVan K., Bates J., Jennings D., Contreras D., Lagomarsino L., Mabee P., Ford L.S., Guralnick R., Gropp R.E., Revelez M., Neil Cobb N., Seltmann K., and Aime M.C. 2019. The Extended Specimen Network: A Strategy to Enhance US Biodiversity Collections, Promote Research and Education, BioScience, , biz140, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz140
Miralles, A., Bruy, T., Wolcott, K., Scherz, M.D., Begerow, D., Beszteri, B., Bonkowski, M., Felden, J., Gemeinholzer, B., Glaw, F. and Glöckner, F.O., 2020. Repositories for Taxonomic Data: Where We Are and What is Missing. Systematic biology.
Schindel, D.E. and Cook, J.A., 2018. The next generation of natural history collections. PLoS Biology, 16(7), p.e2006125.
Addink, W. and Hardisty, A., 2020. ‘openDS’–Progress on the New Standard for Digital Specimens. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 4, p.e59338.