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