The Eitschberger Lepidoptera collection of is one of the largest and most significant collections of butterflies and moths ever donated to a public museum. Containing nearly one million specimens from all major groups and world regions, it has already been the basis for hundreds of scientific publications. This project will make the collection accessible to the scientific community and general public by integrating it into the Florida Museum of Natural History's (FLMNH) Lepidoptera collection at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. Currently, the Eitschberger collection is largely inaccessible because the specimen storage containers are incompatible with the museum's storage system. This project will therefore provide the storage equipment and scientific expertise necessary to properly sort, identify, prepare and house these specimens.
Integration of this collection will substantially strengthen the FLMNH Lepidoptera collection, which simultaneously will be reorganized, and specimen data for key groups will be made available via the Internet. The project team will complete several publications based on the collection, and training in museum techniques will be provided to high school and university students. Ultimately, the Eitschberger collection will be open to the students, researchers, enthusiasts, photographers and authors that regularly visit the McGuire Center, and will thus help the museum to illustrate the importance of natural history collections in society.
This project successfully completed the first phase in integrating the Eitschberger Lepidoptera collection (ELC) into the Florida Museum of Natural History's (FLMNH) McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. Containing nearly one million specimens of butterflies and moths from all major groups and world regions, the ELC has already been the basis for hundreds of scientific publications. Specimens were originally stored in a great variety of containers, of which the majority were either incompatible with our museum's storage system, or inadequate for long-term storage. The project resulted in their re-location into foam-lined boxes within 8,500 new drawers purchased with grant funding to allow their integration into the FLMNH collection. During the process, specimens were labeled with accession labels documenting the source of the material and, where needed, locality labels for field-pinned specimens. After initial sorting and identification, where necessary, specimens were curated taxonomically and housed in the appropriate section of the collection. To conserve resources for other curation priorities, a very few large groups, such as the genus Pieris, which were already stored in pest-proof drawers and well curated and identified, were left in their original containers where they remain fully accessible to researchers. The grant enabled a world expert on Palearctic (Eurasian temperate region) Lepidoptera, which comprised a large portion of the ELC, to assist with curating the collection, in addition to numerous curatorial assistants needed to process the hundreds of thousands of specimens. While integrating ELC specimens several major groups of the FLMNH were entirely recurated, updating identifications and organizing specimens geographically to make them easily accessible to researchers. Such groups included, among others, various Pieridae ('whites'), Polyommatinae ('blues'), Sphingidae ('hawkmoths') and Ithomiini ('clearwings'), the genus Oeneis and the Palaearctic Melitaeini ('checkerspots'). As a result, several of these collections are now the most comprehensive in the world from particular regions. Additional enhancements to the FLMNH collections included the preparation of 24,000 specimens to fill current gaps in our holdings, archiving of tissue samples from more than 6,000 specimens for DNA study, and digitizing of data and images from 14,000 specimens. This grant has therefore significantly improved one of the world's three largest Lepidoptera collections and made abundant new data available for researchers in many fields. Lepidoptera are model groups for research into evolution, genetics, animal behavior, physiology, ecology and conservation. The documented movement of Lepidoptera over the last century provided some of the first and best evidence for the effects of climate change on organisms. Efforts to conserve threatened butterflies throughout the USA have also helped to preserve declining habitats and focus public attention on the current biodiversity crisis. We expect that the resources developed through this grant's funding will contribute to numerous research programs both inside and outside the museum. Indeed, specimens and information from the ELC have already been incorporated into evolutionary studies of Palearctic 'blues' and the description of new tropical Andean butterfly species by project researchers. The project has also provided many training and outreach opportunities. More than 115 people have been directly involved in project activities, including 4 senior personnel, 1 postdoc, 7 technicians, 5 middle and high school students, 29 undergraduate students, 5 graduate students and 65 other volunteers, including 56 high school students attending the FLMNH summer Junior Volunteer (JV) programs. Preparation and curation of moths from the ELC has formed the focus of several JV programs, which have introduced hundreds of high school students to the idea of biodiversity and the roles of natural history museums in research and conservation. In addition, the JV program provides opportunities for students to begin their own independent research projects working with museum staff, and several such students have published peer-reviewed articles and won prizes at local and state science and engineering fairs. General training provided to the above students and volunteers has included specimen identification, preparation, accessioning, tissue sampling, databasing, photography and curation. In addition, the project has provided several research opportunities in DNA study, including the extraction and amplification of target genes to study evolution. A Research Experiences for Undergraduates supplement funded two undergraduate students to work on the classification and evolution of the butterfly genus Tegosa, resulting in the discovery of new and unrecognized species and the presentation of a poster on the results at a major international Lepidoptera conference. In addition, numerous tours have been guided around our collections, including the ELC collection, involving students, visitors to the museum's annual butterfly festival ButterflyFest and to several international professional meetings, photographers and filmmakers from the National Geographic Society and interest groups.
