Eric Rickart
University of Utah, UT·Ecology & Evolution
Museum drawers across the United States hold millions of preserved mammals, each a record of where and when an animal lived. Measurements taken from these specimens, such as body size or reproductive condition, show how species vary over time and respond to environmental change.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Computer Science
- Topics
natural history collections
museum specimens
mammals
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Digitize morphological and reproductive traits, such as body measurements and breeding condition, from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America across 19 U.S. museums.
- Develop new standards for mammal trait data and extend existing software tools so that museum records can be published in a consistent, searchable format on platforms like iDigBio.
- Coordinate digitization across partner museums and align trait data with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) so museum and field monitoring data can be used together.
More about the research
Yet much of this trait information sits in handwritten or nonstandard records that researchers cannot easily search or combine.
Why it matters
Easy-to-find, standardized trait data for over a million mammal specimens could give researchers better baselines for biodiversity and improve predictions of how mammals respond to changing environments. The datasets are intended to support new ecological, evolutionary and biomedical research, and the shared tools and standards could help other museums digitize their own collections.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Theodore Stankowich
California State University-Long Beach, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize and publish morphological (body shape and size) and reproductive trait data from about 1.2 million non-marine mammal specimens from western North America, held in 19 U.S. natural history museums.
Joseph Cook
University of New Mexico, NM·Ecology & Evolution
Survey viral diversity across the mammal family tree by sequencing frozen museum tissues from nearly 600 species in 25 of 27 mammal orders, chosen to maximize evolutionary and geographic coverage.
Erin Manzitto-Tripp
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Digitize 3 million Asian vascular plant specimens from US herbaria, with a focus on Southeast Asian and Himalaya-Hengduan biodiversity hotspots.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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