Theodore Stankowich
California State University-Long Beach, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Natural history museums hold millions of mammal specimens. Each one records what an animal looked like, where it lived and when it was collected.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Computer Science
- Topics
natural history collections
museum specimens
mammals
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Digitize and publish morphological (body shape and size) and reproductive trait data from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America, held in 19 U.S. natural history museums.
- Develop new data standards for mammal traits and extend existing software tools so specimen data are consistent and easy to find on biodiversity platforms such as iDigBio.
- Coordinate digitization across partner museums and align the trait data with measurements collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), so the two sources can be used together.
More about the research
Measurements such as body size and reproductive traits show how species vary over time and respond to environmental change. Yet much of this information sits in paper ledgers and nonstandard formats, so researchers cannot easily find or use it. This collaborative project aims to fix that for the mammals of western North America, a region with complex terrain and climate and many mammal species.
Why it matters
Standardized, searchable trait data from about 1.2 million museum mammals could give ecologists and evolutionary biologists better baselines for measuring biodiversity change. It could also improve predictions of how mammals in western North America respond to changing environments. The project expects the data to support new ecological, evolutionary and biomedical research, and the shared standards and tools could help other museums digitize their own collections.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Eric Rickart
University of Utah, UT·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize morphological and reproductive traits, such as body measurements and breeding condition, from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America across 19 U.S. museums.
Joseph Cook
University of New Mexico, NM·Ecology & Evolution
Survey viral diversity across the mammal family tree by sequencing frozen museum tissues from nearly 600 species in 25 of 27 mammal orders, chosen to maximize evolutionary and geographic coverage.
Erin Manzitto-Tripp
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize 3 million Asian vascular plant specimens from US herbaria, with a focus on Southeast Asian and Himalaya-Hengduan biodiversity hotspots.
The school
California State University-Long Beach: 3 labs on PI Pages, $34M a year on research, 24 research doctorates a year.
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