A workflow for expanding DNA barcode reference libraries through 'museum harvesting' of natural history collections.

Natural history collections are the physical repositories of our knowledge on species, the entities of biodiversity. Making this knowledge accessible to society - through, for example, digitisation or the construction of a validated, global DNA barcode library - is of crucial importance. To this end, we developed and streamlined a workflow for 'museum harvesting' of authoritatively identified Diptera specimens from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

Enhancing DNA barcode reference libraries by harvesting terrestrial arthropods at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

The use of DNA barcoding has revolutionised biodiversity science, but its application depends on the existence of comprehensive and reliable reference libraries. For many poorly known taxa, such reference sequences are missing even at higher-level taxonomic scales. We harvested the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (USNM) to generate DNA barcoding sequences for genera of terrestrial arthropods previously not recorded in one or more major public sequence databases.

Increasing Information Content and Diagnosability in Family-Level Classifications.

Higher-level classifications often must account for monotypic taxa representing depauperate evolutionary lineages and lacking synapomorphies of their better-known, well-defined sister clades. In a ranked (Linnean) or unranked (phylogenetic) classification system, discovering such a depauperate taxon does not necessarily invalidate the rank classification of sister clades. Named higher taxa must be monophyletic to be phylogenetically valid.

Introduction of a conversation starter tool to improve health habits in young children.

Background: Childhood overweight and obesity rates in the United States continue to climb. Providers must identify feasible interventions to improve health habits to prevent and treat obesity in children.

Methods: Parents (n = 91) of four-to eight-year-old children were recruited and surveyed regarding their child's current health habits and perception of their child's weight status.

Testing a Pediatric Palliative Care Education Workplace Intervention.

Pediatric palliative care is aimed at pain and symptom management, reducing hospitalization, promoting psychosocial care, and improving quality of life for children with serious illness. As a professional caregiver, nurses play an essential role in the provision of appropriate pediatric palliative care in clinical care settings. The purpose of this quality improvement study was to improve pediatric nurses' awareness and perceptions of palliative care.

Stabilized Morphological Evolution of Spiders Despite Mosaic Changes in Foraging Ecology.

A prominent question in animal research is how the evolution of morphology and ecology interacts in the generation of phenotypic diversity. Spiders are some of the most abundant arthropod predators in terrestrial ecosystems and exhibit a diversity of foraging styles. It remains unclear how spider body size and proportions relate to foraging style, and if the use of webs as prey capture devices correlates with changes in body characteristics.

Multilateral benefit-sharing from digital sequence information will support both science and biodiversity conservation.

Open access to sequence data is a cornerstone of biology and biodiversity research, but has created tension under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Policy decisions could compromise research and development, unless a practical multilateral solution is implemented.

Standards recommendations for the Earth BioGenome Project.

A global international initiative, such as the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), requires both agreement and coordination on standards to ensure that the collective effort generates rapid progress toward its goals. To this end, the EBP initiated five technical standards committees comprising volunteer members from the global genomics scientific community: Sample Collection and Processing, Sequencing and Assembly, Annotation, Analysis, and IT and Informatics. The current versions of the resulting standards documents are available on the EBP website, with the recognition that opportunities, technologies, and challenges may improve or change in the future, requiring flexibility for the EBP to meet its goals.

The critical role of natural history museums in advancing eDNA for biodiversity studies: a case study with Amazonian fishes.

Ichthyological surveys have traditionally been conducted using whole-specimen, capture-based sampling with varied but conventional fishing gear. Recently, environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as a complementary, and possible alternative, approach to whole-specimen methodologies. In the tropics, where much of the diversity remains undescribed, vast reaches continue unexplored, and anthropogenic activities are constant threats; there have been few eDNA attempts for ichthyological inventories.

The genome of a daddy-long-legs (Opiliones) illuminates the evolution of arachnid appendages.

Chelicerate arthropods exhibit dynamic genome evolution, with ancient whole-genome duplication (WGD) events affecting several orders. Yet, genomes remain unavailable for a number of poorly studied orders, such as Opiliones (daddy-long-legs), which has hindered comparative study. We assembled the first harvestman draft genome for the species , which bears elongate, prehensile appendages, made possible by numerous distal articles called tarsomeres.

Slingshot spiders build tensed, underdamped webs for ultrafast launches and speedy halts.

We develop a mathematical model to capture the web dynamics of slingshot spiders (Araneae: Theridiosomatidae), which utilize a tension line to deform their orb webs into conical springs to hunt flying insects. Slingshot spiders are characterized by their ultrafast launch speeds and accelerations (exceeding 1300 [Formula: see text]), however a theoretical approach to characterize the underlying spatiotemporal web dynamics remains missing. To address this knowledge gap, we develop a 2D-coupled damped oscillator model of the web.

Implementing a Substance Use Screening Protocol in Rural Federally Qualified Health Centers.

Introduction: In 2018, nearly 20% of Americans aged 12 years and older reported using illicit substances, with higher rates in rural areas. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) provide health care to one in five rural Americans. However, estimates suggest that only 13.

Phylogeny of the orb-weaving spider family Araneidae (Araneae: Araneoidea).

We present a new phylogeny of the spider family Araneidae based on five genes (28S, 18S, COI, H3 and 16S) for 158 taxa, identified and mainly sequenced by us. This includes 25 outgroups and 133 araneid ingroups representing the subfamilies Zygiellinae Simon, 1929, Nephilinae Simon, 1894, and the typical araneids, here informally named the "ARA Clade". The araneid genera analysed here include roughly 90% of all currently named araneid species.

Sexual Size Dimorphism: Evolution and Perils of Extreme Phenotypes in Spiders.

Sexual size dimorphism is one of the most striking animal traits, and among terrestrial animals, it is most extreme in certain spider lineages. The most extreme sexual size dimorphism (eSSD) is female biased. eSSD itself is probably an epiphenomenon of gendered evolutionary drivers whose strengths and directions are diverse.

Spiders did not repeatedly gain, but repeatedly lost, foraging webs.

Much genomic-scale, especially transcriptomic, data on spider phylogeny has accumulated in the last few years. These data have recently been used to investigate the diverse architectures and the origin of spider webs, concluding that the ancestral spider spun no foraging web, that spider webs evolved 10-14 times, and that the orb web evolved at least three times. These findings in fact result from a particular phylogenetic character coding strategy, specifically coding the of webs as logically equivalent, and homologous to, 10 other observable (i.

Improving Postpartum Depression Screening in Pediatric Primary Care: A Quality Improvement Project.

Background: Despite recommendations for standardized postpartum depression screening in primary care pediatrics, few pediatric healthcare providers are adequately screening mothers for postpartum depression.

Aims: To improve standardized screening for postpartum depression in the pediatric primary care setting. Secondary aims were to determine if infant and family characteristics (gender of infant, feeding method, insurance type, income level, ethnicity of infant) were associated with positive postpartum depression screening.

Next-generation museum genomics: Phylogenetic relationships among palpimanoid spiders using sequence capture techniques (Araneae: Palpimanoidea).

Historical museum specimens are invaluable for morphological and taxonomic research, but typically the DNA is degraded making traditional sequencing techniques difficult to impossible for many specimens. Recent advances in Next-Generation Sequencing, specifically target capture, makes use of short fragment sizes typical of degraded DNA, opening up the possibilities for gathering genomic data from museum specimens. This study uses museum specimens and recent target capture sequencing techniques to sequence both Ultra-Conserved Elements (UCE) and exonic regions for lineages that span the modern spiders, Araneomorphae, with a focus on Palpimanoidea.

Implementing Comprehensive Primary Care Referral Tracking in a Patient-Centered Medical Home.

The Patient-Centered Medical Home care model emphasizes efficient, coordinated care distributed among interdisciplinary team members. One key function to care coordination is referral/test tracking. This study evaluated the referral practices in a nurse-managed Patient-Centered Medical Home primary care clinic.

Earth BioGenome Project: Sequencing life for the future of life.

Increasing our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet's organisms. Herein, we present a perspective on the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology that aims to sequence, catalog, and characterize the genomes of all of Earth's eukaryotic biodiversity over a period of 10 years.

Open access genomic resources for terrestrial arthropods.

Genome sequencing initiatives like the Arthropod i5k project and other biodiversity genomics research rely on access to high quality DNA and/or tissue. Global collection initiatives such as the Smithsonian Global Genome Initiative (GGI) and its partner network, the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) aim to provide access to these resources at high-quality standards. Here, we review progress toward providing genomic resources (tissues, DNA, genomes) for terrestrial arthropods, a megadiverse animal group, and compare progress in genome sequencing to all other animals.

The spider tree of life: phylogeny of Araneae based on target-gene analyses from an extensive taxon sampling.

We present a phylogenetic analysis of spiders using a dataset of 932 spider species, representing 115 families (only the family Synaphridae is unrepresented), 700 known genera, and additional representatives of 26 unidentified or undescribed genera. Eleven genera of the orders Amblypygi, Palpigradi, Schizomida and Uropygi are included as outgroups. The dataset includes six markers from the mitochondrial (12S, 16S, COI) and nuclear (histone H3, 18S, 28S) genomes, and was analysed by multiple methods, including constrained analyses using a highly supported backbone tree from transcriptomic data.

Data Release: DNA barcodes of plant species collected for the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

The Global Genome Initiative has sequenced and released 1961 DNA barcodes for genetic samples obtained as part of the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens Program. The dataset includes barcodes for 29 plant families and 309 genera that did not have sequences flagged as barcodes in GenBank and sequences from officially recognized barcoding genetic markers meet the data standard of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life. The genetic samples were deposited in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History Biorepository and their records were made public through the Global Genome Biodiversity Network's portal.