Collaborative Research: Imaging the Tall Timbers Research Station's Biological Research Collections—The goal of this project is to create high-resolution digital images of the ca. 16,000 plant, bird, mammal, and Lepidoptera specimens in the Tall Timbers Research Station (TTRS) Museum in Tallahassee, Florida, USA. The specimens represent a nearly complete collection of plant, bird, mammal, and Lepidoptera species that occur in the Red Hills region of Florida and Georgia. In addition to imaging all specimens, the project will migrate existing plant and animal specimen description data and associated images to the Florida State University herbarium database, from which they will be accessible through an existing on-line searchable website. All of the specimen records generated by the project will be searchable by Global Biodiversity Information Facility portal using the DiGIR protocol and will be deposited in Morphbank (www.morphbank.net). The Red Hills Region, from which most of the collection is drawn, is a part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain ecoregion, which is one of the nation's top five "biodiversity hotspots." The Red Hills have particularly high biodiversity because of the frequent application of prescribed fire, on which most of the indigenous species depend. Thus, the collection is a valuable source of baseline data for natural species diversity and distribution, which can be applied in research, conservation, and restoration throughout the East Gulf Coastal Plain. Most of the specimens were collected by renowned taxonomists and naturalists, lending credibility and value to the collection. Over 21 federally listed threatened or endangered species and over 400 state listed threatened or endangered species are represented in the collection, usually by multiple specimens. TTRS researchers mentor numerous graduate students and undergraduate interns, most of whom rely on TTRS specimens for their research. Access to web-based imagery for species identification will be particularly useful to these researchers and others in the several universities and biological field stations within the ecoregion. The TTRS collections can be found at http://www.talltimbers.org/museum.html.
