Smithsonian to Photograph 200,000 Insects With Custom Conveyor System

In an ambitious effort to preserve and study insect pollinators, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History is launching a groundbreaking project to digitize 200,000 specimens in just one year. This extraordinary task, which involves some of the world’s largest insect pollinator collections, is being made possible with the help of a custom-built conveyor system. Once completed, the project will offer unprecedented access to these vital species, contributing to ongoing conservation and research efforts worldwide.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History is home to an impressive 2.5 million insect pollinator specimens, including bees, butterflies, flies, and moths. Through this new initiative, 1,500 specimens will be digitized every day, with three high-resolution photographs taken of each specimen, capturing dorsal, lateral, and frontal views. The project’s scope includes not only the images but also the digitization and transcription of detailed information from each specimen’s label, such as its name, location, and date of collection.

Why Insect Pollinators Matter

Insect pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity and a healthy ecosystem. As essential contributors to the pollination of plants, they directly support the production of one in every three bites of food that humans consume. Yet, despite their importance, many insect species are facing significant population declines due to factors like habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change. By making these collections more accessible to researchers, this digitization project will allow for a deeper understanding of pollinator populations, enabling more effective conservation strategies and ensuring the survival of these vital creatures.

A Revolutionary Process

The digitization process is far from ordinary. Using the custom conveyor system created by the experts at Picturae, specimens will be carefully moved along a track, where they will be photographed in great detail. The time-lapse footage showcases the system’s efficiency, with specimens, including tiny tangle-veined flies, moving toward their designated positions on the conveyor belt for imaging.

The butterfly and moth specimens will be photographed from various angles, including the underside of their wings, but only when they are mounted upside down, a standard method for these delicate insects. Each image captured is designed to preserve as much information as possible for future researchers.

Picturae is not new to high-end and large-scale entomology digitization solutions. In 2021 and 2022, its team digitized 500,000 insects for the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

“With a total collection of more than 20 million specimens, the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is one of the biggest and most important institutes worldwide. In cooperation with Picturae, the Museum für Naturkunde started to digitize part of their pinned insect collection. In two years time, more than 650,000 specimens went over our revolutionary Entomology Conveyor,” Picturae says.

Open Access for the Public

After the Smithsonian’s photos are captured and undergo quality control checks, the images and metadata will be made publicly available via the Smithsonian Open Access Portal and the museum’s collections portal. These images will be released under the Creative Commons CC0 license, meaning they will be freely available for anyone to use, study, or share, thereby accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and enabling citizen scientists and researchers worldwide to explore the world of insect pollinators.

This digitization effort not only helps preserve these fragile specimens for the future, but also transforms them into invaluable resources that can fuel worldwide research on biodiversity, conservation, and ecology for years to come. Stay tuned for updates as the Smithsonian’s insect pollinator collection becomes more accessible than ever before. Until then, you can marvel at PetaPixel’s last article offering a peek into the museum’s enormous collection.

Image credits: Smithsonian, Picturae