"WoNA" – Weevils of North America:
ESA Annual Meeting 2013
XI-13,2013, Austin, TX
A Virtual, Specimen-Based Platform Using Symbiota
http://symbiota1.acis.ufl.edu/scan/portal/
Nico M. Franz, Charles W. O'Brien, Sarah D. Shirota & Michael Shillingburg
Introduction
Weevils, or snout beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae),
are among the most diverse lineages of insects
worldwide, with nearly 3000 species inhabiting different
biomes across North America; i.e., Canada and the
United States. At least 500 species of these exclusively
plant feeding beetles are known to occur in Arizona
and play an integral role in agricultural and natural
ecosystems as both pests (example: pine tree-infesting
bark beetles) and beneficial species (example: species
introduced to control aquatic weeds).
Weevils are notoriously difficult to identify, and
reliable, comprehensive, and thoroughly constructed online knowledge bases for the North American species of
Curculionoidea species are not yet available.
Hasbrouck Insect Collection , School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.
URL: http://taxonbytes.org/asuhic/; Contact E-mail: [email protected]
Figs. 2-10. WoNA homepage, with examples of high-resolution specimen images, species pages, and distribution maps.
Identification tools
In June of 2012, a team of students and curators in the
Hasbrouck Insect Collection (ASUHIC) initiated the
virtual "Weevils of North America" checklist project
– abbreviated "WoNA" (Fig. 2). This continuously
growing knowledge resource is available on-line at:
Fig. 4. Acoptus suturalis LeConte, 1876
http://symbiota1.acis.ufl.edu/scan/portal/checklists/checklist.php?cl=1
Fig. 2. WoNA homepage showing Latin family, genus, and species
names (with author and year), as well as available specimens.
All elements are dynamically linked to species pages, images,
descriptions, specimen pages, and distribution maps .
Fig. 5. Brachystylus sayi Alonso-Zarazaga, 1994
One great remaining challenge for WoNA is the
creation of interactive keys to reliably identify
curculionoid families, subfamilies, and (where possible)
genera. The function to build such keys is provided
through Symbiota. However, in practical terms this task
will require (1) updating of the current WoNA
reference taxonomy (O'Brien & Wibmer 1982; AlonsoZarazaga & Lyal 1999) and (2) careful translation of a
paper-based dichotomous key for North American weevil
subfamilies and genera (Anderson 2002) into a on-line
matrix-based format. To the extent that we can succeed
in creating these keys, WoNA will establish itself as a
prime knowledge environment for identifying North
American weevils and documenting their distributions.
Integration at greater scales
Fig. 7. Species page
for A. saginatus.
Fig. 8. Species page
for C. oblongus.
Fig. 6 (above left). Image view (thumbnails) of the WoNA checklist for six weevil species, facilitating species diagnoses.
Figs. 7-8 (above right). Species pages for two WoNA species. The diagnoses are taken from original descriptions and
revisions made available on-line through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/).
Fig.1. Example of a WoNA specimen occurrence record (ASUHIC0003650).
All records (100%) are georeferenced using SCAN protocols and tools.
As of November, 2013, WoNA holds at least one
specimen occurrence for 925 species of weevils, and a
total of 4800 specimens. The majority of these originate
from recent donations to ASUHIC by Charles O'Brien
(Green Valley, AZ), supplemented by legacy material
accumulated by ASU entomologists. We have added
high-resolution images for > 250 species (Figs. 3-6) –
typically a dorsal and a lateral view, with a 1 mm scale
bar – that will form the basis of species pages which also
provide diagnostic features and distributions (Figs. 7-10).
WoNA is designed to become a large collaborative
effort involving multiple specialists, students, and
collections across North America. For the coming year
2014 we are targeting these goals: (1) integrate at least
one record for 1500 species; (2) image up to 750 species;
(3) incorporate legacy feature-based descriptions for up
to 500 species; (4) add one major second collection to the
effort; and (5) use the momentum of (1)-(4) towards a
WoNA-specific proposal that will target more
information increments towards 80-90% species-level
coverage for North America for all (1-3) categories.
Fig. 3. Haplorhynchites planifrons (LeConte, 1876)
Creation of "WoNA"
WoNA is the first faunistic and taxonomic product
derived from the Southwest Collections of Arthropods
Network (SCAN) project. SCAN is sustained by the
Symbiota collection management platform which means
that all information in WoNA in based on individually
databased and uniquely identified specimens. One
such record – i.e. specimen ASUHIC0003650 (Acalles
sylvosus Blatchley, 1916) – is shown below (Fig. 1):
Future directions
WoNA, as a part of SCAN, is closely aligned with a
nationwide effort to leverage specimen information from
natural history collections towards large-scale analyses
of species occurrences and interactions. In the case of
weevils there is a special opportunity to link to host
plant records, as these observations are often captured
at the same time a specimen is collected at a particular
location and can reveal coevolutionary interactions
(Anderson 1993; Oberprieler et al. 2007; Franz & Engel
2010). In SEINet (http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/) there
is already a rich information resource for vascular plants
that will lend itself to a wealth of co-occurrence studies
once the two Symbiota networks (i.e. SCAN and SEINet)
are integrated to allow combined analytical queries.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank past and current members of the ASUHIC group for their contributions
to the WoNA project; in particular Sangmi Lee, Andrew Jansen, Dustin Daniel, Nicole
Henry, Amanda Smith; and Gregory Setliff (University of Kutztown, PA). Neil Cobb (PI of
SCAN, NAU) and Edward Gilbert (Symbiota lead developer, ASU) have provided essential
support in establishing SCAN and WoNA. The WoNA project has been funded in part by the
National Science Foundation (awards DEB-1155984 and EF-1207107 to NMF) and through
a United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service grant to NMF to
train a new generation of weevil systematists.
References
Figs. 9-10. Google Earth map (left, North America) and
SCAN Google map (right, Southwestern U.S.) showing
present geographic coverage of WoNA specimens.
Alonso-Zarazaga, M.A. & C.H.C. Lyal. 1999. A World Catalogue of Families and Genera of
Curculionoidea (Insecta: Coleoptera) (excepting Scolytidae and Platypodidae). Barcelona,
Entomopraxis.
Anderson, R.S. 1993. Weevils and plants: phylogenetic versus ecological mediation of
evolution of host plant associations in Curculioninae (Coleoptera: Curculionidae).
Memoirs of the Entomological Society of Canada 165: 197–232.
Anderson, R.S. 2002. Family 131. Curculionidae. In: J.R.H. Arnett et al. (Eds.): American
Beetles, Polyphaga: Scarabaeoidea to Curculionoidea, Volume 2. Boca Raton, CRC Press,
pp. 722–815.
Franz, N.M. & M.S. Engel. 2010. Can higher-level phylogenies of weevils explain their
evolutionary success? A critical review. Systematic Entomology 35: 597–606.
Oberprieler, R.G., A.E. Marvaldi & R.S. Anderson. 2007. Weevils, weevils, weevils
everywhere. Zootaxa 1668: 491–520.
O'Brien, C.W. & G.J. Wibmer. 1982. Annotated checklist of the weevils (Curculionidae
sensu lato) of North America, Central America, and the West Indies (Coleoptera:
Curculionoidea). Memoirs of the American Entomological Institute 34: 1–382.