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The Entomology Collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANSP) contains approximately four million insect specimens including some of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Like most large entomology collections, no complete inventory of the species represented in the collection was available and even a physical search for a species could not ensure that all available specimens would be recovered for study. Between 2010 and 2014, we created a species-level index (called here spindex) of all species and their specimen counts at ANSP, along with each species’ location in the collection. Additional data captured during the project included the higher level classification of each species and type of specimen preparation. The spindex is searchable online: http://symbiont.ansp.org/entomology/. The spindex project documented 96,126 species in the ANSP Entomology Collection, representing about 10% of the described insect fauna. Additionally, over 900 putative primary types were discovered outside the Primary Type Collection. The completion of this project has improved access to the collection by enabling scientists and other users worldwide to search these collection holdings remotely and has facilitated staff in curation, research, collection management and funding proposals. A spindex is an important tool that is overlooked for planning and carrying out specimen level digitisation. This project is a case study for building a species-level index. A detailed protocol is provided, along with recommendations for other collections, including cost estimates and strategies for tracking progress and avoiding common obstacles.

Prescribed fire is a conservation management tool that is frequently used to foster biodiversity by attempting to mimic historic wildfire regimes, reduce invasive species, and maintain habitat integrity. Simultaneously, insects that provide essential ecosystem services such as decomposition, nutrient cycling, and pest control, are globally declining. Within the pyroentomology literature there are mixed reports of positive and negative effects that prescribed fires have on insect communities. This is likely due to generalizing prescribed fires and not accounting for fire heterogeneity created by the fire characteristics such as fire severity. To better understand if prescribed fire severity can affect insect communities, we used multispectral reflectance data collected by Sentinel-2 to methodically quantify prescribed fire severity and compared ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) taxonomic and functional community composition responses between an unburned site and two sites burned with contrasting fire impacts. We found 23 ground beetle species and used 30 morphological, physiological, phenological, and ecological functional traits for each species. We found that our moderate fire severity site had different taxonomic and functional community compositions from both our unburned and high severity site. Surprisingly, we did not find a strong difference in taxonomic or functional ground beetle composition between our unburned and high severity site. Thus, we provide support that prescribed fire severity does affect ground beetle community composition and encourage future pyroentomology studies to account for fire severity which will help guide conservation managers to make more accurate decisions and predictions about prescribed fire effects on biodiversity in our native landscapes.

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