The management plan for this project is to sort, taxonomically upgrade, and computerize collection event data for the estimated 50,750 unallocated specimen lots in the wet-preserved invertebrate collection over the next three years.
The unallocated material includes several large collections from San Francisco Bay, the mouth of the Columbia River, Monterey Bay, and Coos Bay. Latitudinal shifts in sea surface temperature isotherms due to El Ninos can result in invertebrate faunal population changes in the eastern Pacific in general. Historical shifts of this type can be recorded in the older collections now held in the unallocated material. The significant benthic collections from San Francisco Bay and other coastal localities of the Northeast Pacific have great value as historical markers of invertebrate population levels and diversity. The San Francisco Bay collections in particular are unique as a historical record of changes in a fauna heavily impacted by human development and successive invasions of non-indigenous organisms. These data are not available elsewhere, and with increasing public and scientific concern over these issues, the impetus to process the specimens constituting the data is at an all-time high.
For groups in which in-house expertise is available, staff will refine these initial taxonomic allocations of the lots sorted to species level. The specimen lots will then be shelved in the main taxonomic collection. Further taxonomic refinement by invited visiting scientists will assist in identifying specimens and disseminating data from those taxa for which in-house expertise is not available and to provide informal training and technical support to the students and volunteers that have become an integral part of departmental activities.
Availability of the newly sorted, accessioned and taxonomically allocated specimens will be announced via the CAS WWW page as well as the Crust-L (Crustacea), and Mollusca lists on the Internet. Notes will also go to the ASC Newsletter, Journal of Crustacean Biology, Crustaceana, Echinoderm Newsletter, Chaetozone (Polychaeta e-newsletter), Systematic Biology and Veliger.
