The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology (WFVZ) is a non-profit museum in Ventura Co., California. It houses collections of more than 200,000 cataloged sets of birds' eggs and 18,000 nests -- the largest of such collections in North America. Data for 40% of the WFVZ's egg sets of perching birds of the world have not yet been digitized, although the greatest numbers of electronic information requests the Foundation receives deal with these birds (the Passerines). Through this grant, the WFVZ will hire undergraduate biology assistants to fully computerize, georeference, and scan the records for 75,000 egg sets, and photograph them. The data and photos will be shared with researchers and the public through several media and Internet sources, including ORNIS/VerteNet, iDigBio, and the WFVZ's website (www.wfvz.org).
Bird eggshells are extremely useful and important for understanding environmental impacts and other important issues such as the impacts of global climate change and pollution; species relationships; egg coloration; and historic and current distributions, breeding dates, clutch sizes, egg sizes, and eggshell thicknesses. This project will train young scientists about museum science, bioinformatics, and ornithology, and will engage the general public as well because of the WFVZ's strong connections with its local community. The project will enhance the public?s involvement in science and its understanding of scientific research.
