California’s deserts are far from wastelands, but bursting with biodiversity and plant life. Each of California’s desert habitats, the Mojave, Colorado and Great Basin deserts each have their own distinct landscapes and ecology. The Mojave is a high desert with winter snowfall and low overall rainfall, while in contrast the colorado desert is a low ..read more

Have you ever wondered why bugs are the colors they are? From the bright hues of butterflies to the earthy tones of ants, these natural colors serve many important roles. These roles include attracting mates, warding off predators, and staying warm. In dragonflies, a 300-million-year-old group intimately connected to freshwater ecosystems on Earth, the uses of their vibrant body colors are almost entirely unknown. This is because of an unfortunate problem – color fade. We would normally turn to specimens in museum collections for data on the colors of species, but because their pigments natur ..read more

The Notes from Nature team is thrilled to announce the launch of a new project called CAS Plants to Pixels! We currently have two live expeditions and a demo that shows off some of the capabilities that we’ll be using for the project in the future. Please give them a try and let us know what you think. The main goal of this project is to digitize California collected herbarium specimens housed at the California Academy of Sciences. You can learn more about the exciting high throughput method being used for imaging and the resulting research involved in this project on the project Research pag ..read more

Happy Earth Day. This is a very special day at Notes from Nature as it’s our 11th anniversary! We first launched Notes from Nature on Earth Day 2013 and we are beyond grateful to still be here today. We are so thankful for all the support of our colleagues, the National Science Foundation and most of all our volunteers! Whether you stopped by once or have been with us for years, we literally won’t be here without you and your support. Thank you. We just wrapped another amazing WeDigBio. Notes from Nature received over 14,000 classifications during the event. Thank you to all the event organiz ..read more

We are looking forward to the next WeDigBio, which is less than 2 weeks away! The event takes place April 18-21, 2024. There is still time to get involved, so please reach out if you are interested or have any questions at all about the event. The WeDigBio symposium for this event will focus on youth, young professionals and their inspirational career paths into science and in particular experience with natural history collections. More details to come soon. Looking forward to it, The Notes from Nature Team ..read more

If you’re watching wildlife from your kitchen window, you are witnessing several levels of biodiversity that cannot be seen through binoculars. Birds and mammals are hosts to many parasites that live amongst their fur and feathers—lice, fleas, flies, ticks and mites. Yet scientists are just scratching the surface of the world of parasites.  Millions of specimens are sitting in museums all over the world, but a lack of digital records make them hard to find and study. Thanks to Terrestrial Parasite Tracker volunteers at Notes from Nature, thousands of these specimens are now available to e ..read more

We closed out WeDigBio October 2023 with over 11,100 classifications. Thanks to all that made it possible! We sincerely appreciate all the symposium talks, onsite and virtual events, everyone that stopped by Notes from Nature and helped us spread the word. There are still lots of expeditions from a wide variety of organisms available on our site. As always feel free to contribute anytime and help by spreading the word. — The Notes from Nature Team ..read more

It’s been an exciting October WeDigBio so far. Notes from Nature has received over 6,000 classifications in the past two days. Thanks to all that attended the symposium on hyperlocal collections. We are particularly excited about the support our new projects have received. Capture the Collections (plants and lichens from Canada) has been very popular and even completed it’s first expedition! Please give it a try it a try. We also launched a very cool Salamander project called Cybermander. This is an important study that helps us understand thermoregulation habits of amphibians. Please check i ..read more

Amphibians worldwide are at risk of disease caused by chytrid fungal pathogens, which have caused drastic declines in some species. There are two main disease-causing members of this group- Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (also known as Bsal). While Bd is endemic to the US- that is, it is present in the US and has not been implicated in large population declines- Bsal is not yet present in the wild in the US. The potential emergence of Bsal in the USA threatens salamander populations, as the US (and specifically, the Appalachian mountains) contains th ..read more

We are thrilled to announce our newest digitization project: “Notes from Nature – Capture the Collections!” We’re also excited to be rolling out our first set of workflows under the banner “Letters from Lowlands – Flora of the Hudson Bay Lowlands.” In partnership with Parks Canada, we are imaging vascular plant, lichen, and bryophyte specimens collected in the Hudson Bay Lowlands region of Canada. Transcribing data from these images allows people to find and use the incredible wealth of information these specimens hold. By participating in the project, you’ll contribute to enhancing the under ..read more