Thanks A Million!

Last Wednesday, while many Notes from Nature folks were in a citizen science hackathon, appropriately enough, we passed the one million transcription mark. It is a big milestone, and all of us involved in the project from the science and developer team appreciate the hard work. That work helps scientists like UC Berkeley’s Joanie Ball-Damerow examine changes in dragonfly and damselfly communities over the past 100 years in California based on museum records. Her work on that will soon be published in the journal Zookeys, and your help with unlocking data makes those kind of projects possible.

In case you are curious, our Notes from Nature user snowysky transcribed data from this specimen image for our millionth record, a sweat bee (Halictus ligatus) that was hanging out on some sunflowers (Helianthus annus) when collected in 1975. We hope everyone involved in the project continues to discover all kinds of hidden treasures locked away in collections, just like this one. Now on to 2 million!