An inordinate fondness (and doneness) for (wood-boring) beetles

A few days ago the CalBug Expedition on wood boring beetles was completed. We want to extend a special thanks to all the volunteers that made this happen!  

 We are also excited to announce that this completion also marks the transition to the next phase of NFN. You will notice that there are no longer any pinned specimen images to transcribe on the site. In fact, we won’t be posting any additional pinned insect images until the new NFN site is launched some time during late Spring or early Summer.  We are already in the process of preparing a new set of CalBug expeditions just as cool as the wood-boring beetle effort we just finished.

You might be wondering about this new and shiny NFN 2.0? Our new NFN site is going to have some great enhancements for everyone involved in the process of doing citizen science transcriptions of natural history collections, and we’ll be talking more, right here, about all the neat stuff with NFN 2.0 soon. Stay tuned!

During the next two months we will focus on finishing up (retiring) existing images of bird ledges, macrofungi labels and herbarium specimens. As these current collections finish those interfaces will be temporary closed until the new NFN is launched. When the new version goes live we plan to provide more focused content across all the interfaces. This means that we will have a lot more expeditions for you to take that are geographically and/or taxonomically focused.  Again, more soon as we get all the pieces in place.

In the meantime there are still many ways to help! We still have lots of images available of bird ledges, macrofungi labels and herbarium specimens.  In fact, we need your help especially right now, as we hope to finish up those collection in the next month or so, to time with our relaunch.

In appreciation,

The NFN Team