Yellow butterflies have great significance in many cultures; some say a yellow butterfly brings guidance and is a sign of hope, while others believe it represents a new life. Whatever you might believe, it is nice to see a pretty yellow butterfly. Most yellow butterflies are in the family Pieridae, which has over 1,000 species. In this next expedition, we are looking at the pierid species Eurema elathea, the Banded Yellow butterfly. Males have delicate blackish bands spanning its yellow forewings, and in both sexes the hindwings are mostly porcelain white, giving it a distinct appearance. However, this species also has slight variations in wing color and pattern depending on where it flies; Banded Yellow butterflies have been found in the Caribbean, southern Central America, and much of South America.

Here at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History, there is a great abundance of Eurema elathea. The information that you transcribe adds value to our ongoing research, by enhancing the data sets we use to answer questions about the history and behavior of these butterflies. We value your contributions to the scientific community, and we thank you for devoting your time and effort to help us complete these butterfly projects.

~ Stacey L. Huber, Digitization Coordinator, McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams are starchy staples in many holiday meals at this time of year. We’ve wrapped together the plant families responsible for these comfort foods, Solanaceae, Convolvulaceae, and Dioscoreaceae (respectively), along with the family responsible for the Andean starch Oca (Oxalidaceae), in this new expedition. The flora of Florida contains 60 native and naturalized species from the potato family, 69 from the sweet potato family, 6 from the yam family, and 8 from the oca family. We encourage you to think about which of the four families you are seeing as you transcribe, insofar as it is easy to do so. Florida members of the yam family are all vines with heart-shaped leaves (as seen in the tile for this expedition). Florida members of the oca family are all short herbs with clover-like leaves (photo). The other two families are each other’s closest relatives and quite diverse in appearance, so there isn’t an easy way to differentiate between the two. You can watch for the most diverse Florida genera from these families though. From the potato family, you might come across Solanum (the genus that gives us potato and tomato), Physalis (the genus that gives us tomatillo), and Nicotiana (the genus that gives us tobacco). From the sweet potato family, you might come across Ipomoea (the genus that gives us sweet potato; these are the morning glories) and Cuscuta (the parasitic dodders, which look a lot like silly string). This expedition combines specimens from the herbaria at the University of West Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, and University of Florida. For more info on WeDigFLPlants, visit https://biospex.org/project/wedigflplants.

Thank you for participating!

Austin Mast
Director, Florida State University’s Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium

Introducing a new ecologically-themed expedition from Plants of Virginia: Wetland Specialist Plants of Virginia! These species share an absolute intolerance for dry, upland conditions and, unless one is a fan of muddy hikes or kayaking, they are not easily encountered. Species restricted to these wetland communities – which range from shaded ravines and forested seeps, to sunny bogs and ponds, to coastal salt-marshes – comprise a flora that is worth getting to know, if only for the critical ecosystem services that they provide. In this edition, over 400 species of wetland-restricted lycopods, quillworts, ferns and flowering plants are assembled for your viewing, no hip-waders required.

— Andrea Weeks

Director Ted R. Bradley Herbarium,George Mason University

We have continued to see some great activity on Notes from Nature the past few weeks, so we wanted to give some general appreciation. We are now over 400,000 transcriptions from over 4,000 volunteers for Notes from Nature 2.0!

Since the beginning of November four more expeditions have been finished.  These included Orange Sulfur butterflies, herbarium specimens from Kentucky, microbe mutualists from Virginia and plants from northeastern U.S. forests. In addition, we have several expeditions that are over 90% complete. In particular it would be great to complete Mississippi Coastal Plant diversity which is now 93% complete. This one has been going for a while, so if everyone who reads this post could contribute a few transcriptions it could be done in no time.

All the best from the NfN Team.

Many, many thanks to all that participated in WeDigBio 2017. We had a variety of very successful onsite events as well as lots of volunteers contributing remotely.

NfN had over 20 expeditions active during the event with a total of over 19,000 transcriptions completed over the four-day event! This included two record setting days, one with over 8,000 transcriptions in a single day.

We hope that many of you will come back to NfN again. There are still several great expeditions running that could use your help.

As a reminder, there is lots of information always available on our Statistics page if you want to explore around. You can also review some of the conversations and observations that went on by searching for #WeDigBio

— The Notes from Nature team

It was another fantastic day at Notes from Nature. We accumulated 2,729 transcriptions. With one more day left we are over 15,000 transcriptions for the event so far.

There are currently 3 expeditions that are over 90% complete. If you are contributing remotely today please feel free to help bring these to completion.

— The NfN Team

The second day of WeDigBio was even better than the first! We smashed yesterdays recording breaking day by accumulating over 8,000 transcriptions! This brings us to over 12,000 transcriptions for WeDigBio so far.

A few highlights were the events in Arkansas and Florida, U.S.A. completing over 2,000 transcriptions each on their respective expeditions.

We are excited to see how the last two days unfold. Track the numbers throughout the day on our Statistics page and see lots of fun activity on Twitter.

The first day of WeDigBio 2017 was a huge success. On Notes from Nature we had over 4,000 transcriptions on the first day (4,209 to be exact!). This bests our previous record of 3,354.

We can’t wait to see what day 2 will have in store. Remember that you can look at lots of interesting numbers on our Statistics page. If you are participating in an onsite event, please come over to Talk and tell us about your event. We’d love to hear from you.

— The NfN Team