CAREER: Digitized data, dung beetles and the dome: improving the understanding of species distribution through research and planetarium-based education.

Cleveland Museum Of Natural History, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding species distribution is central to the biodiversity modeling that is increasingly used to inform conservation planning and other applied sciences that benefit society. This project integrates a research program with a new informal education program to enhance both the scientific and public understanding of evolutionary and planetary processes that contribute to species distribution. The research component of this project will assess the importance of evolutionary history in niche modeling that estimates species distribution, with the aim of improving the approach used to select variable environmental layers used in these models. The ability to more accurately predict species distribution under both present and future climate scenarios is essential for identifying and understanding the habitats of species at risk of extinction, modeling the spread of introduced species or medically important invertebrates that can transmit disease, and much more. The findings from the research will be incorporated into the new informal education program that teaches biogeography under a planetarium dome. This program also will leverage the global efforts that have amassed over 1.3 billion specimen records worldwide, as well as technological advances in planetarium software, to visualize biodiversity data in an immersive and dynamic setting. This novel outlet to broadcast digitized data will transform how institutions equipped with planetariums communicate biodiversity data and will create endless opportunities to develop new programs for sharing biodiversity research with the public. Improved public understanding of these complex scientific concepts can facilitate changes in attitudes to the impact of environmental change through increased awareness of the connectivity between planetary processes and life on Earth. A combined systematic and phylogeographic study of Australian dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) will be used to assess the importance of evolutionary history in environmental niche modeling. This model-group contains both a relictual Gondwanan and a younger Indomalayan clade that will be assessed in a phylogenetic and ecological framework to explore the heritability of environmental tolerance in closely-related but biogeographically distinct taxa. The evolution of niche dynamics for these biogeographically distinct faunas will be assessed through comparative analysis of niche models, predicted niche occupancy profiles and disparity through time plots. Findings will inform environmental layers selection for future analyses and improve the understanding of biotic and abiotic factors that contribute to species distribution. Beyond informing a key question in evolutionary biology, these results will be integrated into the new planetarium program that aims to improve public scientific literacy relating to species' evolution, ecology and planetary change. Program content will align with Ohio's grade 8 learning standard for STEM and will be presented to museum guests in the onsite planetarium, while offsite school programming will be hosted in a mobile planetarium. Program evaluation will assess the impact of teaching evolution using planetariums, the contribution of museums to informal education, and best-practices for leveraging curatorial expertise in public and school programs. 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.