Hello, Zooniverse!

Discipline: Nature, Biology, History

Task: Drawing lines to measure specimens

The New Brunswick Museum is one of Canada’s oldest museums, home to more than 300,000 specimens, including one of the world’s largest collections of Aquarana frogs (mink frogs, green frogs, and bullfrogs). These collections aren’t just fascinating; they’re incredibly valuable for understanding how our natural world is changing.

The first expedition, Hop to it – frog measurements, is all about, you guessed it, FROGS. By measuring amphibian specimens, the researchers are looking for clues about how their body sizes may have changed over time, and especially in response to climate change.

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to environmental shifts, and unfortunately, many species are at risk. Changes in their populations can ripple through ecosystems, affecting everything from insect populations to water quality. The good news? You can help the researchers better understand what’s happening.

This is a project you should periodically check on. Photographing these frog specimens is very labour-intensive, so it takes time to get enough for each new expedition. This campaign will be ongoing for the foreseeable future, but the project may be paused from time to time as the team photographs new specimens to be measured. 

This project contains images of deceased animals that have been preserved as museum specimens, which are vital for conservation and research.

Join the project: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/md68135/notes-from-nature-the-new-brunswick-museum-digital-engagement-lab 

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Annonce du lancement du laboratoire d’engagement numérique du Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick !

Bonjour à toute la communauté Zooniverse !

Bonjour, Zooniverse!

Domaines : Nature, biologie, histoire

Tâche : Tracer des lignes pour mesurer des spécimens

Le Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick est l’un des plus anciens musées du Canada; il abrite plus de 300 000 spécimens, dont l’une des plus grandes collections au monde de grenouilles du genre Aquarana (grenouilles vison, grenouilles vertes et grenouilles-taureaux). Ces collections ne sont pas seulement fascinantes; elles sont d’une valeur inestimable pour comprendre comment notre monde naturel évolue. 

La première expédition, intitulée « Hop to it – frog measurements », porte, comme vous l’avez deviné, sur les GRENOUILLES. En mesurant des spécimens d’amphibiens, les chercheurs cherchent à déterminer comment la taille de leur corps a évolué au fil du temps, et plus particulièrement en réponse aux changements climatiques.

Les amphibiens sont particulièrement sensibles aux changements environnementaux et, malheureusement, de nombreuses espèces sont menacées. Les fluctuations de leurs populations peuvent avoir des répercussions sur l’ensemble des écosystèmes, allant des insectes aux qualités de l’eau. La bonne nouvelle? Vous pouvez aider les chercheurs à mieux comprendre ce qui se passe.

Il s’agit d’un projet que vous devriez suivre régulièrement. La prise de photos de ces spécimens de grenouilles demande beaucoup de travail; il faut donc du temps pour en obtenir suffisamment pour chaque nouvelle expédition. Cette campagne se poursuivra dans un avenir prévisible, mais le projet pourrait être mis en pause de temps à autre, le temps que l’équipe photographie les nouveaux spécimens à mesurer.

Ce projet contient des images d’animaux décédés qui ont été conservés en tant que spécimens de musée, essentiels à la conservation et à la recherche.

Joignez-vous au projet : https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/md68135/notes-from-nature-the-new-brunswick-museum-digital-engagement-lab

Happy Anniversary, Happy Earth Day and most of all Thank You!

Today is the Notes from Nature projects 13th anniversary! We first launched Notes from Nature on Earth Day 2013. We are beyond grateful to still be here today and to be continuing this important work with you all every single day.

We are also thankful for all the support of our colleagues, the National Science Foundation and the Zooniverse team!

Here’s to many more years! As always there is more work to be done, so please stop by Notes from Nature when you can and help us spread the word about the importance of biodiversity data.

– The Notes from Nature Team

Thanks to everyone that visited Notes from Nature for WeDigBio day 2. We saw over 2,500 classifications and a lot of love for California plants with over 1170 in that project alone.

WeDigBio Day 3 is well underway with so many great expeditions to contribute to. Whether you like butterflies, plants or even mammal Field Notes, we’ve got something for you.

We hope everyone is enjoying Day 3. Please help us spread the word and encourage others to participate.

Visit Notes from Nature today at any time to help out!

— The Notes from Nature Team

WeDigBio 2026 got off to a solid start! NfN received close to 2,500 transcriptions on day 1 of this 4 day event. Digitizing Biological Collections in Canada received over 1160 classification alone! Thank you so much for all that contributed.

We have so many fun projects available to work on. Please visit Notes from Nature today to contribute. We are especially excited about our new field book transcription expedition called W.C. Stanley’s Field Notes 1961 – 1963. Please give it a try.

— The Notes from Nature Team

We are excited to announce our first Notes from Nature transcription project using ALICE. ALICE is the Aggregate Line Inspector and Collaborative Editor tool. One of the main advantages of this tool is that it allows us to transcribe long pages of text a single line at a time. This means that we can transcribe one line of the page or the entire page depending on the time and motivation. 

This set of expeditions is part of the RANGES project, which is focused on biodiversity information about mammals. We are starting off our field note transcription expeditions with books from the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum mammal collection. 

William C. Stanley was a student at the University of Kansas (KU) from 1961-1963. While at KU, Stanley participated in three field expeditions. The first occurred in Summer 1961 as part of the late Curator of Mammals J. Knox Jones’s summer field course in Vertebrate Natural History. During the second trip, in Summer 1962, Stanley, Jones, and fellow KU naturalists, Ticul Alvarez and Richard C. Fox, surveyed mammals in Mexico. During  the third expedition, Summer 1963, Stanley surveyed bats in Kansas.Visit the RANGES Project on Notes from Nature and try it out! Look for the expeditions titled: W.C. Stanley’s Field Notes 1961 – 1963.

WeDigBio starts is less than a week. The event takes place April 9 – 12, 2026. People from all over the world join together to digitize museum specimen data and to celebrate biodiversity collections. We hope you can join us.

Notes from Nature will have lots of great expeditions to contribute to. We’ll be featuring butterflies, California plants, mammals and more so please stop by. It’s also very helpful if you can spread the word about this unique and important event.

Looking forward to it,

— The Notes from Nature Team

This exciting new project invites you to explore and transcribe specimens from the Royal Ontario Museum’s vast natural history collections—collections that bring together the worlds of biology, history, and nature in extraordinary ways.

Natural history collections hold thousands of untold stories. Each specimen label captures a snapshot of life: where a species lived, when it was collected, and what the environment looked like at that moment in time. These records are priceless tools for understanding how life on Earth has changed. Yet many of them remain hidden in old handwritten or typed labels that haven’t been read in decades. That’s where you come in.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), one of North America’s leading cultural institutions, is home to an incredible 18 million objects, with natural history forming a vital part of its mission. Our first set of expeditions will shine a spotlight on insects and plants from across Canada—two incredibly diverse and ecologically important groups with so many specimens still waiting to be digitized.

By helping transcribe these labels, you’re doing more than converting labels into data—you’re unlocking scientific knowledge that fuels biodiversity research around the world. Your transcriptions will be shared through Canadensys and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), where they become part of global conservation action, scientific discovery, environmental policy, and education. These two open-access platforms can be used worldwide by anyone with an internet connection.

Whether you’re a returning Notes From Nature volunteer or joining us for the first time, we’d love to have you along for this journey. Every label you transcribe helps reveal a piece of our planet’s history—and helps protect its future.

Jump in and explore the new project today!

https://bit.ly/4bVH15v

Hello friends,

We have a few updates to share from Capture the Collections.

First, we’re excited to announce several new workflows now launching:

1. Our partnership with the University of Guelph continues with two new workflows focused on grasses (Poaceae) and sedges (Cyperaceae).

2. We’re introducing our first workflows from the Flora of British Columbia project, featuring the heather family (Ericaceae) and the rose family (Rosaceae).

3. Expedition Arctic Botany is back! These workflows highlight work completed in Summer 2025 by Molson students Tamara Chaput and Matthew De Roover, drawing from the lichen and liverwort collections.

We also have more difficult news to share. Herbarium digitization projects at the Canadian Museum of Nature are being paused, and Kim and Lyn will be stepping away from Capture the Collections. Until digitization efforts can resume, these workflows mark our final ones and will, we hope, help bridge the gap between the end of this digitization phase and what comes next. We appreciate your patience if there is a delay in hearing back from the project team or our guest moderators during this time.

It’s hard to fully express how grateful we are for the time you’ve spent with us—transcribing, discussing, and sharing your expertise on the Talk boards. Capture the Collections has never been just about mobilizing data; it’s also been about building community, and we truly hope you’ve felt that along the way.

Until next time,

Kim, Lyn, and Jennifer

1. Capilano River Salmon Hatchery, Vancouver, British Columbia Photo: K.Madge 2. Carex bigelowii subsp. bigelowii, Kangiqtualuk Agguqti, Nunavut. Photo: P. Sokoloff

Bonjour, les amis

Nous avons quelques nouvelles à partager de la part de Capture the Collections.

Tout d’abord, nous sommes heureux d’annoncer le lancement de plusieurs nouveaux flux de travail :

1. Notre partenariat avec l’Université de Guelph se poursuit avec deux nouveaux flux de travail consacrés aux graminées (Poaceae) et aux carex (Cyperaceae).

2. Nous présentons nos tout premiers flux de travail issus du projet Flora of British Columbia, mettant en vedette la famille des bruyères (Ericaceae) et la famille des roses (Rosaceae).

3. Expédition Botanique Arctique est de retour ! Ces flux de travail mettent en valeur le travail réalisé à l’été 2025 par les étudiantes et étudiants Molson Tamara Chaput et Matthew De Roover, à partir des collections de lichens et d’hépatiques.

Nous avons aussi une nouvelle plus difficile à partager. Les projets de numérisation des herbiers au Musée canadien de la nature sont mis en pause, et Kim et Lyn se retireront de Capture the Collections. Jusqu’à ce que les activités de numérisation puissent reprendre, ces flux de travail marquent nos derniers projets et aideront, nous l’espérons, à faire le lien entre la fin de cette phase de numérisation et la suite. Nous vous remercions de votre patience si un délai survient dans les réponses de l’équipe du projet ou de nos modératrices et modérateurs invités durant cette période.

Il est difficile d’exprimer pleinement à quel point nous vous sommes reconnaissants pour le temps que vous avez passé avec nous — à transcrire, à échanger et à partager vos connaissances sur les forums de discussion. Capture the Collections n’a jamais été uniquement une question de mobilisation des données ; il s’agit aussi de bâtir une communauté, et nous espérons sincèrement que vous l’avez ressentie tout au long de cette aventure.

À la prochaine,

Kim, Lyn et Jennifer

Help us find out more about our volunteers! As part of a PhD research effort*, we’re exploring who volunteers on citizen science projects like Notes from Nature and why. We invite you to complete a brief survey. The questionnaire will ask about personal information such as gender, age and ethnicity. It will also ask about your experience of taking part in the project. It should take approximately 20 minutes to complete. All responses will be kept confidential and anonymized. Taking part is entirely voluntary. The survey has received ethical approval from the University of York. More information can be found via the survey link. 

Thank you for your time.

*Sarah Laptain, a graduate student in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York, is leading this effort.  

We’d like to extend our gratitude to all the contributors. We had a whopping 47,523 images classified by 1910 unique Zooniverse users as well as contributions from 2640 sessions where contributors were not logged into the Zooniverse platform.

We are very excited to dig into the data now, which will help us understand how salamanders behave when they have access to thermal differences in their environment, and how they behave with and without thermal gradients after pathogen exposure. Your contributions to Project Cybermander are helping fill gaps in this knowledge about thermoregulation habits of amphibians and will help us make disease-risk projections for these special animals.

Thank you again and we’re excited to share final results as soon as we’re finished with analyses.

— Natalie Claunch