| Abstract Detail
Systematics Section/ASPT Cameron, Kenneth M. [1]. Documenting the Occurrence through Space & Time of Aquatic Non-indigenous Fish, Mollusks, Algae, & Plants Threatening North America's Great Lakes. One of the greatest threats to the health of North America's Great Lakes is invasion by exotic species, several of which already have had catastrophic impacts on property values, the fisheries, shipping, and tourism industries, and continue to threaten the survival of native species and wetland ecosystems. Additional species have been placed on watchlists because of their potential to become aquatic invasives. We have established a network of herbaria and zoology museums from among the Great Lakes states of MN, WI, IL, IN, MI, OH, and NY to better document the occurrence of these species in space and time by imaging and providing online access to the information on the specimens of the critical organisms. Several initiatives are already in place to alert citizens to the dangers of spreading aquatic invasives among our nation's waterways, but this project is developing complementary scientific and educational tools for scientists, students, wildlife officers, teachers, and the public who have had little access to images or data derived directly from preserved specimens collected over the past three centuries. This bi-national Thematic Collections Network of >25 institutions from eight states and Canada is presently digitizing >1.5 million historical specimens representing 2,550 species of exotic fish, clams, snails, mussels, algae, plants, and their look-alikes documented to occur in the Great Lakes Basin. As they become available, data are uploaded to the Great Lakes Invasives Symbiota portal (GreatLakesInvasvies.org) and eventually ingested by the (iDigBio.org) national resource.
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Related Links:
Great Lakes Invasvies Symbiota Portal
GLI Project Page at WIS
1 - University Of Wisconsin, Department Of Botany, 154 Birge Hall, 450 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
Keywords:
invasive species
Digitization
herbarium
Symbiota
database
Aquatic
natural history.
Presentation Type: Oral Paper:Papers for Sections
Session: 18
Location: Salon 3/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Monday, July 27th, 2015
Time: 1:45 PM
Number: 18002
Abstract ID:635
Candidate for Awards:None |
