Elizabeth R Ellwood

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County · La Brea Tar Pits & Museum

Machine learning (ML) has great potential to drive scientific discovery by harvesting data from images of herbarium specimens-preserved plant material curated in natural history collections-but ML techniques have only recently been applied to this rich resource. ML has particularly strong prospects for the study of plant phenological events such as...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biz140.].

For more than two centuries, biodiversity collections have served as the foundation for scientific investigation of and education about life on Earth (Melber and Abraham 2002, Cook et al. 2014, Funk 2018). The collections that have been assembled in the past and continue to grow today are a cornerstone of our national heritage that have been treate...

The biodiversity sciences have experienced a rapid mobilization of data that has increased our capacity to investigate large-scale issues of critical importance (e.g., climate change and its impacts, zoonotic disease transmission, sustainable resource management, impacts of invasive species, and biodiversity loss). Several initiatives are underway...

APPENDIX S1. Description of morphological features used to code Acer rubrum herbarium specimens. Note only stages 1, 2, and 3 were used in analyses presented in the main text.

APPENDIX S3. Model selection results for linear models including different combinations of two‐way interactions between leafing phenophase and temperature, elevation, and/or year.a

APPENDIX S4. Timing of different reproductive stages and leafing stages, as predicted by best fitting models at the mean elevation (545 m), year (1946), and January, February, or March temperature (8.35°C) in our data set.

APPENDIX S7. Sensitivity analysis of classification scheme model‐fit to sample size.

APPENDIX S5. Co‐occurrence of reproductive (y‐axis) and leafing (top x‐axis) phenophases; overall (left), in northern states (>42.5° latitude, center), and in southern states (<32.5° latitude, right).

APPENDIX S6. Comparison of the effects of temperature on the timing of flowering, seed set, and leafing out.

APPENDIX S2. Model selection results for linear models including different combinations of two‐way interactions between reproductive phenophase and temperature, elevation, and/or year.a

Premise of the Study Herbarium specimens are increasingly used to study reproductive phenology. Here, we ask whether classifying reproduction into progressively finer‐scale stages improves our understanding of the relationship between climate and reproductive phenology. Methods We evaluated Acer rubrum herbarium specimens across eastern North Amer...

Premise of the Study Phenological annotation models computed on large‐scale herbarium data sets were developed and tested in this study. Methods Herbarium specimens represent a significant resource with which to study plant phenology. Nevertheless, phenological annotation of herbarium specimens is time‐consuming, requires substantial human investm...

The Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education - Data Initiative (BLUE Data) is a US National Science Foundation-funded Research Coordination Network in Undergraduate Biology (RCN-UBE) working to generate community consensus around biodiversity data literacy skills. This diverse network brings together biodiversity, data, and education specia...

Implementation science boasts tools and techniques to increase the chances of adoption of best practices to a wide variety of users. Theoretical roots of implementation science are present in education, mental health and health services research. This talk will highlight the application of implementation science principles to the wide-spread adopti...

The School and Teacher Programs of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County have partnered with the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum (LBTPM) and the Invertebrate Paleontology (LACMIP) collection to create two “citizen curation” exercises dubbed “Project Paleo”. Classroom kits were created with unsorted fossils from either LBPTM or from a local i...

Numerous studies have addressed antipredatory benefits of mixed-species flocks of foragers, but studies on individual's vigilance as a function of group size are limited. In the Cheolwon area of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, vigilance of the subordinate White-naped cranes (Grus vipio) in 11 groups composed of conspecifics and the dominant Red-crow...

Premise of the Study | Herbarium specimens provide a robust record of historical plant phenology (the timing of seasonal events such as flowering or fruiting). However, the difficulty of aggregating phenological data from specimens arises from a lack of standardized scoring methods and definitions for phenological states across the collections comm...

The digitization of biocollections is a critical task with direct implications for the global community who use the data for research and education. Recent innovations to involve citizen scientists in digitization increase awareness of the value of biodiversity specimens; advance science, technology, engineering, and math literacy; and build sustai...

The application of a species-extinction model allows improved determination of the timing of phenological events, and increases the breadth of data types that can be mined and compared in phenology research.

Many monitoring programs, such as bird banding stations, would benefit from improvements in their sampling designs. Autumn bird migration records from Manomet in southeastern Massachusetts from 1969 to 2012, collected 5 days a week, every year, show strong evidence of changes in bird migration cohort sizes and average arrival dates. Using these pre...

Preparing students to explore, understand, and resolve societal challenges such as global climate change is an important task for evolutionary and ecological biologists that will require novel and innovative pedagogical approaches. Recent calls to reform undergraduate science education emphasize the importance of engaging students in inquiry-driven...

The timing of phenological events, such as leaf-out and flowering, strongly influence plant success and their study is vital to understanding how plants will respond to climate change. Phenological research, however, is often limited by the temporal, geographic, or phylogenetic scope of available data. Hundreds of millions of plant specimens in her...

In this era of global change, early recognition of change in Earth's biota is vital to prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecological health. Biological outliers (e.g., in phenology, distribution, morphology, etc.) may indicate early stages of significant, transformative change that merit immediate attention. As active naturalists, collectors of b...

During its inaugural year, Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections, WeDigBio 2015, involved citizen scientists from >50 countries in transcribing biodiversity specimen labels from a variety of taxonomic groups over four days. Participants at onsite events at museums, universities, and science classrooms, along with individuals across the...

A goal of the biodiversity research community is to digitize the majority of the one billion specimens in US collections by 2020. Meeting this ambitious goal requires increased collaboration and technological innovation and broader engagement beyond the walls of universities and museums. Engaging the public in digitization promises to both serve th...

Unlabelled: • Premise of the study: There is great interest in studying leaf-out times of temperate forests because of the importance of leaf-out in controlling ecosystem processes, especially in the face of a changing climate. Remote sensing and modeling, combined with weather records and field observations, are increasing our knowledge of fact...

Leaf out phenology affects a wide variety of ecosystem processes and ecological interactions and will take on added significance as leaf out times increasingly shift in response to warming temperatures associated with climate change. There is, however, relatively little information available on the factors affecting species differences in leaf out...

Plants in wild and agricultural settings are being affected by the warmer temperatures associated with climate change. Here we examine the degree to which the iconic New England cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is exhibiting signs of altered flowering phenology. Using contemporary records from commercial cranberry bogs in southeastern Massachusett...

Flowering times are well-documented indicators of the ecological effects of climate change and are linked to numerous ecosystem processes and trophic interactions. Dozens of studies have shown that flowering times for many spring-flowering plants have become earlier as a result of recent climate change, but it is uncertain if flowering times will c...

S1a. Phylogeny of Massachusetts spring-flowering plant species used in the analyses. S1b. Phylogeny of Wisconsin spring-flowering plant species used in the analyses. (TIF)

Phylogenetic analysis description and methods. (DOCX)

Background/Question/Methods Phenology has proven to be an effective metric for assessing how climate change is impacting organisms around the world. In response to warmer temperatures and altered precipitation, plants and animals have adjusted their phenologies to various degrees. Here, we investigated how a suite of insect species from throughou...

The strength and direction of phenological responses to changes in climate have been shown to vary significantly both among species and among populations of a species, with the overall patterns not fully resolved. Here, we studied the temporal and spatial variability associated with the response of several insect species to recent global warming. W...

Background/Question/Methods Ferns have received little attention from a phenological and physiological perspective. As one of the oldest and most widespread lifeforms they have persisted through past periods of global climate change. Here we utilized a novel analysis of historical records combined with an innovative physiological approach to test...

The effects of climate change have been detected in numerous biological systems. Study of phenology, including the timing of bird migrations, has proven to be an effective tool for understanding the degree to which plants and animals are affected by climate change. In this study, we analyzed records of birds' arrival at Concord, Massachusetts, over...

As a consequence of warming temperatures around the world, spring and autumn phenologies have been shifting, with corresponding changes in the length of the growing season. Our understanding of the spatial and interspecific variation of these changes, however, is limited. Not all species are responding similarly, and there is significant spatial va...

Recent papers have considered whether the present system of single-blind reviewing results in bias against women or other groups of authors in biological journals. If so, double-blind reviewing might be an alternative approach that avoids such bias. We investigated the effects of gender, nationality (English-speaking countries only), academic age,...

Background/Question/Methods Research to date on the biological effects of climate change on plants and animals in New England has focused almost exclusively on plant flowering times and bird arrivals in the spring. Insects play a prominent role in ecological food webs, yet are underrepresented in phenological research. This crucial missing link has...