| NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 14, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 18, 2023 |
| Award Number: | 1802019 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Reed Beaman
rsbeaman@nsf.gov (703)292-7163 DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
| Start Date: | August 15, 2018 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $762,713.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $762,713.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2019 = $247,235.00 FY 2020 = $166,464.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2345 TOWER GROVE AVE SAINT LOUIS MO US 63110-3420 (314)577-5176 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
2345 Tower Grove Ave St. Louis MO US 63110-3420 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Digitization |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
The "Endless Forms" Thematic Collections Network (TCN), composed of 17 collaborating U.S. herbaria from 11 states, will digitize approximately two million specimens belonging to some of the most interesting plant species on Earth. Iconic species such as the Giant Saguaro Cactus, the Venus Fly Trap, and the leafless Ghost Orchid of southern Florida are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of plants that have evolved astounding adaptations allowing them to grow in extreme terrestrial environments, including deserts, tropical rain forests, and nutrient poor bogs. Many of these plants can also be challenging to study in nature and face elevated conservation concerns in the face of rapid environmental change. By digitizing herbarium specimens of these groups, researchers will gain a better understanding of these adaptations and their evolution, and can design conservation and management strategies. The public's interest in these unusual plants affords an opportunity to engage k-12 students and teachers in discussions about biodiversity and preservation, plant adaptations, and mutualistic relationships. This project will also train undergraduate and graduate students in the areas of museum studies. Finally, the availability of two million digitized records for these charismatic plant groups will help protect them and enhance their enjoyment by hobbyists, citizen scientists, and other non-academic enthusiasts
This "Endless Forms" project is the first TCN initiative to digitize the very significant holdings of non-North American specimens housed within North American herbaria. This project will provide access to digitized records of 15 plant families associated with adaptations to extreme terrestrial environments that can be used to test evolutionary and ecological hypotheses. This network will, for example, provide data that can be used to explore trait development and evolution, species delimitation, and geographic distribution modelling and that can inform national and regional floristic projects. This project will help provide critically needed information to overcome obstacles related to studying plant families which are very large, have cryptic diagnostic features, or occur in geographically challenging areas. This TCN will also help overcome an acute problem of access to specimens of CITES-listed taxa (species threatened with extinction) by easing data access and by holding a Plant Collecting Ethics Workshop that will bring together an array of stakeholders to make recommendations on best practices for handling sensitive data for rare species. The project will fill taxonomic and geographic gaps in U.S. institutional specimen digitization, will bring new institutions into the national digitization effort and will invest in the development of tools to stream-line the digitization process. This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Endless Forms Digitization Project was a collaborative initiative including 14 US herbaria to digitize approximately 2 million preserved specimens of plants adapted to extreme environments. Such adaptations include epiphytic (non-parasitic plants that grow on other plants like orchids and bromeliads), carnivorous (meat-eating plants such as Venus Fly Trap and pitcher plants), and succulent (thick, fleshy plants adapted to store water like cacti and spurges) growth forms. These highly specialized and often narrowly distributed plants are particularly susceptible to climate change and habitat loss, since the nearest suitable habitat may be hundreds of miles away and thus natural relocation virtually impossible. The basic collection data associated with specimens of these species, including where and when the plant was found and the conditions in which it was growing, will allow researchers, conservationists, land managers, and other stakeholders to locate, identify, and protect key populations and habitats for some of the most charismatic plants on Earth.
The Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) Herbarium is one of the largest and most active herbaria in the world, containing more than 7.8 million preserved plant specimens collected from all seven continents. The collection is particularly rich in material from the Neotropics, Africa, and Madagascar, and is a globally important resource for plant research and conservation work. For this project, MBG contributed over 320,000 records representing more than 25,000 species from almost every country. The specimens range in age from the mid-1700s to the 2020s, covering almost 300 years of botanical history.
High-resolution images and digital records for all specimens digitized by this project are uploaded to Tropicos (https://tropicos.org/home), the Garden's online database of botanical names, authors, collectors, publications, and specimens, where they are freely available to users anywhere with an internet connection. Tropicos is one of the most comprehensive and frequently consulted botanical databases, with almost 1.4 million scientific names, over 7 million specimen records, and more than 2 million images. The website receives on average approximately 50 million hits per year from a wide range of users. Additionally, Tropicos shares specimen data with global aggregators like iDigBio (https://www.idigbio.org/) and GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/), ensuring its critical biodiversity data are available whenever and wherever they are needed.
Last Modified: 11/18/2024
Modified by: Jordan K Teisher
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