CSBR: Natural History Collections: Housing, Databasing, Digitizing and Accessibility Upgrades to the Largest Pacific Island Land Snail Collection (Bishop Museum)

Bernice P Bishop Museum, Honolulu HI

Investigators

Abstract

Islands comprise only five percent of the Earth's landmass, yet nowhere in the world, in relation to land area, does land snail diversity compare to that of the Pacific Islands, where more than 6,000 species occur. However, habitat destruction, environmental change and incursions by invasive species threaten populations of native land snails. Snails have the highest recorded extinction rate of any major animal group, and the majority of extinctions are from Pacific Islands. The largest Pacific Island land snail collection in the world is at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum (BPBM), which houses six million specimens. Natural history collections are critical to maintain research knowledge and to making decisions about biodiversity conservation. To secure this collection and improve accessibility to critical data for researchers, natural resource managers, students, and the public, this project will rehouse land snail specimens in environmentally stable and protective containers, image all original specimens from which species descriptions are based, and digitize all collection data so as to make these data readily available. The project team will recruit and train college and high school students to assist with this work and students will receive training in topics ranging from systematics to curation and museum conservation. Researchers and students will participate in outreach activities to increase public awareness of invertebrates, including land snails, their importance to natural ecosystems, and for monitoring environmental change, human migration and trade; and in the value of natural history collections to conserving and securing biodiversity. The security and accessibility of the largest and most biogeographically diverse Pacific Island land snail collection in the world will be ensured by completing the objectives of the project. Specifically, to safeguard against Byne's and glass disease, all cotton will be removed from the approximately 116,900 glass vials and replaced with polyethylene caps or archival foam. Approximately 5,000 lots with shells housed freely in no-lid boxes will be transferred to polystyrene friction boxes to secure them and prevent disassociation from labels. All labels are currently handwritten and these will be replaced by thermal transfer, acid-free labels with QR codes. Data from the ledger, labels, and other historical documents will be digitized, digitally curated, and images of Pacific island land snail primary types will be made available online and in type catalog publications. Specimen data and images will be made available through portals including iDigBio (idigbio.org), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and the BPBM website (bishopmuseum.org/PILS).