Post on 13-Jun-2015
Image courtesy of People Productions
Design, sampling and storage of the NEON terrestrial insect collections
Dr. David Hoekman
• Insect Ecologist• National Ecological
Observatory Network• dhoekman@neoninc.org
Chironomus islandicus over Mývatn, May 2008 Photo: Árni Einarsson
NEON GoalThe goal of NEON is to enable understanding and forecasting of the impacts of climate change, land use change and invasive species on continental-scale ecology by providing data and
infrastructure to support research, education and environmental management in these areas.
Systematic, standardized sampling across sites
NEON Observing Systems
• Terrestrial observing system (organismal biology)
• Terrestrial instrument system (climate, biogeochemistry, soils)
• Aquatic observing system (organismal and instrumental)
• Airborne observing system (remote sensing)• STREON (top-down and bottom-up controls,
aquatic)• Mobile deployable platform• Land use analysis package (integration with
national data• NEON collections
The first NEON tower in Sterling, Colorado
A CONTINENTAL-SCALE OBSERVATION SYSTEM
The National Ecological Observatory will provide access to:
• All data*• All metadata*• All QA/QC information (process and data)• Protocols and procedures used to collect data• Instrument specifications, characteristics and performance• Algorithms used to process data
*Unless legally protected by the Endangered Species Act or other legislation
NEON Access Policy
Organismal Sampling
• Plant biodiversity
• Plant biomass, leaf area, and chemical composition
• Plant phenology
• Birds
• Ground beetles
• Mosquitoes
• Small mammals
• Disease
• Soil microorganisms
• Soil biogeochemistry
Terrestrial Observation System (TOS)
TOS – Site Specific Sampling Design
• Spatially balanced design
• Stratified by vegetation
type
• Insects sampled at
biodiversity plots
Terrestrial Biological
Field Sampling
Draft site schematic for TOS sampling
Ground beetle samplingCarabidae
• Charged with measuring biodiversity and abundance
• Weekly pitfall samples from each site during the field season
• 4 pitfalls at 10 biodiversity plots for 40 traps per site
• Pinned/pointed• identified using reference
collection, expert taxonomists, DNA barcoding
• “by-catch”
Culicidae
• Charged with measuring biodiversity, abundance and phenology
• Mosquitoes also being sampled for disease
• Weekly CDC light-traps (CO2 baited) at the core site, every 4 weeks at relocatable sites at 10 biodiversity plots per site
• Identified using reference collection, expert taxonomists, DNA barcoding
• Off-season vs. field season for phenology
Mosquito sampling
NEON – Generated Natural History Collections
Use existing specimens for DNA barcodes (Construction)
• Validation of field and lab identifications of sentinel taxa
Curation of NEON samples (Operations)
• Voucher collections of sentinel taxa
– For external PI-driven research needs
– Long-term storage
• Range of organisms• Insects
• Vascular plants and algae
• Animal tissues and genomic extracts
• Microbial communities
• Soils and sediments
DNA barcoding
• Cara’s recent publication• Integrative Taxonomy for Continental-scale Terrestrial Insect
Observations - PLoS ONE 7(5): 2012 e37528.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037528
• Currently contracting with the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding
• all of our records are added to the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD)
• We will continue to barcode beetles and mosquitoes from each site/domain as we build up our reference collection
Standing up the observatory
2013
2013
2013