The impact of preserved museum specimens is transforming and increasing by three-dimensional (3D) imaging that creates high-fidelity online digital specimens. Through examples from the openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network, we describe how we created a digitization community dedicated to the shared vision of making 3D data of specimens available and the impact of these data on a broad audience of scientists, students, teachers, artists, and more. High-fidelity digital 3D models allow people from multiple communities to simultaneously access and use scientific specimens. Based on our multiyear, multi-institution project, we identify significant technological and social hurdles that remain for fully realizing the potential impact of digital 3D specimens.

Nicaragua is a biodiverse country, but documented herpetological specimens are underrepre-sented compared to neighboring countries. In 2018 we conducted a collaborative expedition between the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and Nicaraguan biologists. We visited sites in the Pacific Low-lands, Caribbean Lowlands, and the Central Highlands, representing the three major biogeographic regions of Nicaragua. We collected specimens of 100 species from a total of 106 encountered. We provide acces-sion numbers and morphological, genetic, and ecological information for these specimens. We recorded 23 new departmental records and the first country record of Metlapilcoatlus indomitus (Smith & Ferrari-Castro, 2008), filling gaps in the known distribution of the species within Nicaragua and across Central America. When available for each species, we provide range maps and comparative genetic trees including conspe-cific reference sequences from the region, making this work a significant addition to existing checklists of the herpetofauna in Nicaragua.

BACKGROUND:Dipsadine snakes represent one of the most spectacular vertebrate radiations that have occurred in any continental setting, with over 800 species in South and Central America. Their species richness is paralleled by stunning ecological diversity, ranging from arboreal snail-eating and aquatic eel-eating specialists to terrestrial generalists. Despite the ecological importance of this clade, little is known about the extent to which ecological specialization shapes broader patterns of phenotypic diversity within the group. Here, we test how habitat use and diet have influenced morphological diversification in skull shape across 160 dipsadine species using micro-CT and 3-D geometric morphometrics, and we use a phylogenetic comparative approach to test the contributions of habitat use and diet composition to variation in skull shape among species.RESULTS:We demonstrate that while both habitat use and diet are significant predictors of shape in many regions of the skull, habitat use significantly predicts shape in a greater number of skull regions when compared to diet. We also find that across ecological groupings, fossorial and aquatic behaviors result in the strongest deviations in morphospace for several skull regions. We use simulations to address the robustness of our results and describe statistical anomalies that can arise from the application of phylogenetic generalized least squares to complex shape data.CONCLUSIONS:Both habitat and dietary ecology are significantly correlated with skull shape in dipsadines; the strongest relationships involved skull shape in snakes with aquatic and fossorial lifestyles. This association between skull morphology and multiple ecological axes is consistent with a classic model of adaptive radiation and suggests that ecological factors were an important component in driving morphological diversification in the dipsadine megaradiation.