iDigBio

iDigBio
Name	iDigBio
Formation	2011
Headquarters	Florida
Leader title	Director
Parent organization	NSF

iDigBio

iDigBio is the United States' national resource for digitized biological specimen data housed within a network of museums, herbaria, zoos, and botanical gardens. The project aggregates specimen records, images, and associated metadata to support research by linking legacy collections from institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University, Field Museum, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and New York Botanical Garden. iDigBio enables cross-disciplinary inquiry by connecting digital specimen data with initiatives like GBIF, BOLD Systems, NEON, and the Encyclopedia of Life.

Overview

iDigBio provides an infrastructure that integrates specimen records from institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard University Herbaria, Natural History Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and Missouri Botanical Garden while interoperating with international aggregators such as GBIF, Atlas of Living Australia, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The platform supports data standards and vocabularies used by projects like Darwin Core, TDWG, GenBank, and Barcode of Life, and it connects researchers from universities such as University of Florida, University of Kansas, Yale University, Stanford University, and University of California, Berkeley. By serving as a hub for collections-based science, iDigBio links curators, taxonomists, ecologists, and informaticians associated with organizations like NSF, NEON, BLM, USGS, and USDA.

History and Development

Launched after planning activities involving the National Science Foundation, the project built on digitization efforts at institutions including Smithsonian Institution, New York Botanical Garden, Field Museum, and Harvard University. Early development drew on collaborations with data initiatives such as GBIF, SI, BHL, and the Encyclopedia of Life, and partnerships with universities like University of Florida, University of Kansas, and Penn State supported pilot digitization workflows. Major milestones included workshops attended by curators from institutions like Yale Peabody Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and Missouri Botanical Garden, and coordination with funding bodies including the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Collections and Data Integration

iDigBio aggregates specimen data from museums, herbaria, and research collections including the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, Field Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and New York Botanical Garden. Data ingestion uses schemas aligned with Darwin Core and integrates sequence data referenced to GenBank, taxonomic treatments from Catalogue of Life and ITIS, and occurrence records shared with GBIF and BOLD Systems. The project facilitates integration of paleontological collections like those at the Smithsonian, vertebrate collections at Carnegie Museum, entomological holdings at the Natural History Museum, and botanical collections at Missouri Botanical Garden, enabling cross-references to resources such as Biodiversity Heritage Library, JSTOR Plant Science, and Encyclopedia of Life.

Services and Tools

iDigBio provides web portals and APIs used alongside tools and platforms such as Symbiota, Specify, Arctos, GBIF API, and IPT to mobilize and serve specimen data from institutions including University of Florida, Harvard Herbaria, Field Museum, and New York Botanical Garden. Analytical workflows connect to geospatial services like ESRI ArcGIS, QGIS, and Google Earth Engine and link to sequence and phylogenetic tools including GenBank, BOLD Systems, TreeBASE, and iTOL. Digitization workflows leverage imaging hardware from vendors used by the Natural History Museum and software developed with partners at Carnegie Mellon University, Texas A&M University, and University of Kansas to support crowdsourcing efforts similar to Notes from Nature and Zooniverse projects.

Research and Education Use

Researchers at institutions such as University of Florida, Yale University, University of Kansas, Stanford University, and University of California use iDigBio data for studies in biodiversity change, species distribution modeling, phylogeography, and invasive species research, often combining records with datasets from NEON, USGS, NOAA, and NASA. Educators integrate specimen-based data into curricula at universities like University of Florida, Penn State, and Arizona State University and in outreach with botanical gardens such as New York Botanical Garden and Missouri Botanical Garden to support citizen science initiatives akin to iNaturalist and Zooniverse. Cross-disciplinary projects tie specimen data to climate records from NOAA, trait databases like TRY, and conservation assessments conducted by IUCN and NatureServe.

Governance and Funding

Governance and oversight have involved partnerships among the National Science Foundation, Florida Museum of Natural History, universities including University of Florida and University of Kansas, and professional societies such as the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and the Botanical Society of America. Primary funding initially came from the National Science Foundation with additional support and collaboration from agencies and foundations including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Mellon Foundation, USGS, USDA, and private donors. Advisory committees and working groups include curators and data managers from institutions like Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Category:Biological_collections