Come visit Notes from Nature at ‘Science Uncovered’ at the Natural History Museum

On Friday the 30th of September, from 16.00 – 22.00, the Natural History Museum in South Kensington London will be hosting our annual festival of science as part of European Researchers’ Night. The theme is Uncovering the hidden worlds of nature – from the depths of the oceans to planets beyond our own – and the Miniature Lives Magnified team at the museum will be showing off our Chalcids!

“Beyond our sight: using the latest technology, scientists can reveal the natural world in more detail than ever before. From bacteria to bioacoustics, learn how microscopic details are helping us understand our future challenges.”

The event is free to attend, and is a wonderful chance to discover rare items from the Museum’s collections, meet hundreds of experts, and take part in interactive science stations, debates and behind-the-scenes tours. You can find out more about the event on the Museum Website.

The team will have a range of slides from our Collection that are being used in our The Killer Within Expedition, which focuses on a group of wasps called chalcids (pronounced ‘cal-sids’). These tiny wasps are parasitoids, meaning they lay their eggs inside other insects. When chalcid eggs hatch the emerging larvae eat the inside of their host. They then grow and pupate until mature enough to burst out as adults, finally killing the host.

Almost invisible to the naked eye the insects in this project inhabit a little known world we rarely notice,  but their lifestyles have a huge impact on nature and our human lives.  Whilst some insects are vital for pollinating our crops or providing food to higher levels of the food chain, the insects in this project are terrors, either as pests causing destruction to our crop plants through their feeding, or as parasitoids killing these pest species by hatching out of their bodies.

By helping us to transcribe some of the 6286 microscope slides we have in the collection, you are making data and information available to scientists worldwide that can help address some of the  key environmental issues we are facing right now, such as sustainable agriculture, the impacts of climate change, and how diseases affect wildlife and humans.

All data transcribed by the expedition will be made freely available for anyone to use on the Museum’s open Data Portal (http://data.nhm.ac.uk).

Come meet the Notes from Nature team at Science Uncovered in the Birds Gallery (Green Zone) of the Natural History Museum: