498 REVIEW The value of museums in the production, sharing, and use of entomological data to document hyperdiversity of the changing North1 Derek S. Sikes, Matthew Bowser, Kathryn Daly, Toke T. Høye, Sarah Meierotto, Logan Mullen, Jozef Slowik, and Jill Stockbridge Abstract: If the current rate of climate change continues, the composition, distribution, and relative population sizes of species in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to change considerably. Understanding the magnitude of this change requires a well- documented baseline against which to compare. Although specimen-less observations can help augment such a baseline for the minority of organisms that can be confidently identified in the field or from photographs, the vast majority of species are small-bodied invertebrates, primarily arthropods, that can only be identified from preserved specimens and (or) their tissues. Museum staff archive specimens and make them and their data avail- able for research. This paper describes a number of challenges to the goal of thorough doc- umentation of high-latitude arthropod biodiversity and their potential solutions. Examples are provided from ongoing and recently completed research that demonstrates the value of museum specimens and the sharing of their data via global portals like GBIF.org. Key words: Arctic, biodiversity, Arthropoda, monitoring, inventory, taxonomic bottleneck. Résumé : Si le taux actuel du changement climatique se maintient, la composition, la répar- For personal use only. tition et les tailles de population relatives d'espèces dans les latitudes plus hautes de l'hémi- sphère nord sont susceptibles de changer considérablement. Pour comprendre l'ampleur de ce changement, il faut une ligne de référence bien documentée contre laquelle on peut com- parer. Bien que les observations sans spécimens puissent aider à augmenter une telle ligne de référence pour la minorité d'organismes qui peuvent être identifiés avec assurance sur le terrain ou à partir de photographies, la grande majorité d'espèces est composée d’inverté- brés à petit corps, principalement des arthropodes, qui ne peuvent être identifiés qu’àpartir de spécimens préservés et (ou) de leurs tissus. Le personnel de musées archive les spécimens et les rend disponibles ainsi que les données connexes aux fins de recherche. Dans cet arti- cle, on décrit un certain nombre de défis à l’encontre du but de la documentation minu- tieuse de la biodiversité d'arthropodes à hautes latitudes et les solutions potentielles à ces défis. On fournit des exemples de recherche en cours et récemment complétée qui démontr- ent la valeur de spécimens de musée et le partage de données via des portails mondiaux comme le Système mondial d’informations sur la biodiversité (GBIF.org). Mots-clés : Arctique, biodiversité, Arthropoda, surveillance, inventaire, goulot d’étranglement taxonomique. Received 14 September 2016. Accepted 29 March 2017. D.S. Sikes, K. Daly, S. Meierotto, L. Mullen, J. Slowik, and J. Stockbridge. University of Alaska Museum, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907 Yukon Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA. Arctic Science Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by Statsbiblioteket Tidsskriftafdelingen (4.125) on 11/15/18 M. Bowser. US Fish and Wildlife Service, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, P.O. Box 2139, Soldotna, AK 99669, USA. T.T. Høye. Arctic Research Center, Aarhus University, 114, Bldg. 1540, DK-8000 Aarhus, Denmark; Department of Bioscience, Kalø, Aarhus University, Grenåvej 14, DK-8410 Rønde, Denmark. Corresponding author: Derek S. Sikes (email: [email protected]). 1This paper is part of a Special issue entitled “Arctic Museum Collections: Documenting and understanding changes in biological and cultural diversity though time and space”. This article is open access. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_GB. Arctic Science 3: 498– 5–14 (2017) dx.doi.org/10.1139/as-2016-0038 Published at www.nrcresearchpress.com/as on 29 March 2017. Sikes et al. 499 Introduction The Arctic and subarctic are regions of intense ecological interest due to the rapid changes resulting from global warming, the biogeographic uniqueness of these regions’ biota, and how well adapted the biota is to a cold climate (Danks 1981; Meltofte et al. 2013; Sikes and Allen 2016). As high temperature records continue to be broken, with the 10 months prior to and including July 2016 being the warmest globally since recording began in 1880 (NASA 2016), we are transitioning into a different world. Research has documented a variety of alarming changes associated with high-latitude warming, which is more rapid than that seen in lower latitudes. For instance, Alaska has warmed about 3.5 °C in the inte- rior during the winter and 2 °C overall since the 1950s (Melillo et al. 2014). Shrubs are expanding into Arctic tundra and alpine zones, fire frequency and intensity have increased, the growing season has lengthened by about 2 weeks, sea ice, alpine snowfields, permafrost, and glaciers are thawing and shrinking, nonnative organisms such as ticks are establishing, and the climate is shifting beyond the physiological optimum of a dominant boreal forest species white spruce, Picea glauca (Veblen and Alaback 1996; Stone et al. 2002; Lawrence and Slater 2005; Sturm et al. 2005; McGuire et al. 2009; Beck et al. 2011; Bret-Harte et al. 2013; Juday et al. 2015; Durden et al. 2016; Phoenix and Bjerke 2016). The National Science Founda- tion (NSF), the premier science funding agency of the United States, has recently prepared a list of 10 major research foci for future NSF investment (NSF 2016). Among these 10, “Navigating the new Arctic” is listed, demonstrating the high priority the NSF places on the documentation of “these rapid biological, physical, chemical and social changes.” The international Conservation of Arctic Fauna and Flora (CAFF) has established the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP), the goal of which is to monitor arctic biodiversity to provide decision makers relevant information about the changing Arctic. Their 2013 Arctic Biodiversity Assessment report (Meltofte et al. 2013) includes a chapter on terrestrial invertebrates (Hodkinson et al. 2013) that stresses the importance of increas- ing our understanding of past, current, and potential future Arctic terrestrial invertebrate For personal use only. biodiversity. Although the Arctic contains fewer arthropod species per unit area than environments at lower latitudes, arthropod diversity is still high and makes up the largest component of multicellular biodiversity in the region (Hodkinson et al. 2013; Høye and Sikes 2013; Sikes et al. 2013; Ernst and Buddle 2015). Arthropods respond rapidly to environmental changes and are deeply entwined in Arctic food webs (Høye and Forchhammer 2008). How- ever, the consequences of climate warming remain understudied across the Arctic and subarctic. Within the Arctic and subarctic biogeographical zones, Alaska’s arthropod fauna is unique. Unlike most of what is now Canada, Alaska’s lower elevations were mostly gla- cier-free during the Neogene and Pleistocene (Ives 1974; Matthews 1975; Behan 1978; Pielou 1991; Elias and Brigham-Grette 2013). This allowed organisms to survive in ice-free refugia (e.g., Beringia) (Abbott and Brochmann 2003; Behan-Pelletier and Schatz 2011; Elias and Brigham-Grette 2013; Pringle 2014). This is thought to be a primary explanation for Alaska’s hundreds of potentially endemic arthropod species (Sikes and Allen 2016). Due to changes in climate and sea levels, the region acted alternatively as a passageway or a barrier, which has resulted in multiple dispersal events between the Palearctic and Nearctic across the Arctic Science Downloaded from www.nrcresearchpress.com by Statsbiblioteket Tidsskriftafdelingen (4.125) on 11/15/18 Bering Land Bridge (Sanmartín et al. 2001; Vila et al. 2011; Sikes and Venables 2013). This has created many complex and interesting biogeographic patterns between the Nearctic and Palearctic. We, and others before us (e.g., Hodkinson et al. 2013), consider it an urgent priority to establish a well-documented baseline for the Arctic’s unique biodiversity, before these ecosystems are greatly altered by predicted radical changes due to climate change. Published by NRC Research Press 500 Arctic Science Vol. 3, 2017 This baseline will allow future assessment of the magnitude of change and enable detec- tion of range shifts, extirpations, extinctions, invasions, and novel species assemblages. The best data are based on vouchered specimens — physical bodies of organisms (Winker 2004; Rocha et al. 2014) and associated environmental data from their collection events. To promote global collaboration, specimens and these data are ideally held for the public trust in well-maintained research collections, such as the University of Alaska Museum, which share specimen data freely online. Museum collections have always served as refer- ences for historical conditions. In recent years, technological advances in museum record digitization, along with increased sampling, have made it possible to infer broad trends of ecological and spatial abundance of terrestrial invertebrates in the Arctic. In addition to a specimen-based assessment of the biota, funding for taxonomic revisions is necessary (Wheeler et al. 2012; Høye and Sikes 2013). Descriptions of new species, new synonymies, and new identification keys are needed