We are thrilled to join folks all over the world participating in WeDigBio by sharing these spectacular photos of African and Australasian ferns. The plant diversity in these parts of the world are stunning, but their existence is threatened with habitat destruction. Aside from us admiring their beauty, we love transcribing labels for these plants because it’s fun to imagine what these ecosystems are or used to be like.

Our new expedition is called Fantastic Ferns! Unlock Tropical Diversity from Africa and Australasia. Please join us in the exploration!

As WeDigBio rapidly approaches, we have one last batch of Swallowtail butterflies ready for transcription — these from the American Museum of Natural History. By now you (and I) may have seen quite a few of these large, colorful butterflies. Do we really need more?

Yes! I’m working toward understanding variations in wing shape across the full geographic range and diversity of the group. Some museums have particular strengths in certain parts of the world, and more established museums like the American Museum and the Smithsonian (remember that batch from last month?) have specimens that are particularly rare and historic. This is valuable to me because I want to examine specimens from all species of New World Swallowtails, and this trip to the American Museum completed my collection of digital images.

I was particularly excited to come across several specimens of the Esperanza Swallowtail, Pterourus esperanza. These were the first I had seen in visits to three other major museums and searching through thousands of specimens. Esperanza Swallowtails are found only in the cloud forests of the Northern Sierra in Oaxaca, Mexico, and weren’t even described until 1975. A 2013 study estimated the population size to be 286 individuals. The precious few specimens at the American Museum can help give us insight into the evolutionary context for this rare and enigmatic species. That understanding can hopefully help better conserve this and other swallowtail species.

Sierra Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico https://flic.kr/p/5nWotU

Papilio esperanza, Oaxaca, Mexico

Keep an eye out for these neat oddities as you transcribe. They’re a treat!

— Hannah Owens, Postdoctoral Associate, Florida Museum of Natural History

As mentioned in an earlier post, we currently have a special museum kiosk expedition being used at the Florida Museum of Natural History. It seems to be going well with lots of users interacting with the kiosks.

Below are some pictures from earlier today. A special thanks to Stacey Huber (Digitization Coordinator at the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity), for sending these along! I will be in Gainesville, Florida next month and look forward to seeing it for myself.

Feel free to take a peek at the expedition on the Notes from Nature site, but realize that this expedition is designed to be used as part of a special onsite exhibition.

— Michael and the Notes from Nature team

The figworts (Scrophulariaceae in the broad sense) are a group of flowering plants that often have gorgeous, bilaterally symmetric (left and right sides mirror each other) flowers. They employ a variety of life history and ecological strategies — my favorite is the role of parasitism in these plants! The humble beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana) gets its name from its proximity to beech trees. This proximity stems from beech drops parasitizing the roots of beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees! And few would suspect that the brilliantly colored, delicate Indian paintbrush is a parasite! They are partial parasites (“hemiparasites”) on nearby grasses and forbs.

These plants have undergone a lot of taxonomic upheaval (many name changes) in the past few years. These name changes have mostly been at the family level but some generic and species names have been modified as well. This was spurred by DNA-based research on the evolution of these species and the expert recommendations of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group.

So this expedition offers two opportunities to you. The first is a chance to learn to recognize the scrophs of Virginia, U.S.A. And the second is the chance to stay on top of some of those troublesome taxonomic name changes!

— Jordan Metzgar, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Because of human fossil fuel use, the world has gotten considerably warmer over the last 60 years, and even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emission today, this warming would continue for several more decades. Climate change has cascading effects on many aspects of the environment, from sea level to how early now melts to rainfall patterns, but there is one thing it can’t change: photoperiod (how much time it is light for each day). This is, in fact, a problem because daylength is used by many plants and animals to determine what time of year it is and thus predict the weather they will encounter. Photoperiod influences decisions ranging from when to produce leaves and flowers in plants to when to migrate and lay eggs for birds. But, now that any particular time of year is warmer without any change in photoperiod, animals and plants aren’t encountering the same conditions as they expected.

Colias eurytheme summer form

The Orange Sulfur Butterfly (Colias eurytheme) is one of the species encountering this problem. This butterfly is found throughout the US, and comes in two seasonal forms: in the summer, the dorsal (top) side of the wings is bright orange and the ventral (under) side is pale yellow, but in spring and fall, the dorsal side is yellow with a small orange patch, and the ventral side becomes darker. This darkening helps the butterflies warm themselves faster when bask in sunlight on cold days. These forms, however, are not determined by temperature but instead by the photoperiod. Thus, these butterflies are likely suffering from the mismatch between temperature and photoperiod created by climate change. What we want to know is if these butterflies have evolved to compensate for this mismatch, such as starting to produce the summer form at shorter photoperiods (earlier in the spring and later in the fall). To do so, we’re photographing thousands of these butterflies in museum collections from across the past 6+ decades.

Colias eurytheme spring/fall form

To use these specimens, however, we need to know when they were collected (among other details). This is where you and Notes from Nature come in. Date of collection is right there, recorded on the labels, but we need it digitized in order to work with it in our studies. You can help us access this data by transcribing it. By combining this label data with data we’re collecting about the butterfly’s wing patterns, we will be able to figure out what time of year the butterflies changed between color patterns in different years. We can then, in turn, determine if this color change has evolved in response to climate change, or if the butterflies are falling behind. Our images and the data you enter will also be contributed to LepNet, so future scientists can also make use of it.

This is the first of what will be multiple expeditions featuring these butterflies, this time using specimens from several collections, including the California Academy of Sciences, the Essig Museum at UC Davis, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This will give us an initial dataset covering a variety of geographic areas. Thank you all for your help!

— Matthew Nielsen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) once again seeks the aid of Citizen Scientists!  We’d like you to join us for an expedition through the Betulaceae (birch) family!

The Betulaceae has six genera and 167 species within its family.  The combined production of edible nuts and the tough bark that denotes this family makes Betulaceae a tough nut to crack!  However, we trust that you all will handle it with ease!

It’s always an incentive to lend a hand to the family that gave us hazelnuts!  From coffee additives to chocolate bars, what is not to like?! Please help us map these trees across the Southeastern United States, and thank you for your company on our expedition.

We are excited to announce a collaboration with the Florida Museum for their 100th Anniversary. This is a special museum kiosk expedition being used for their special exhibition. Feel free to take a peek, but realize that this expedition is designed to be used as part of a special onsite exhibition.

The expedition will continue with our recent phenology theme, but it will only consist of one question. The idea is to prioritize specimens for future scoring expeditions and to give visitors a sense of how citizen science projects work in a museum context. There is also interpretive material that goes along with the kiosks. In addition, we hope that these onsite visitors will be motivated to check out some of our more extensive expeditions on Notes from Nature.

— The Notes from Nature team

Thank you, citizen scientists, for helping complete the Poweshiek skipperling expedition! During this expedition, you saw and transcribed the 155 specimens from the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity collection. This data will be compiled with other records of Oarisma poweshiek from other institutions so researchers can begin to look for the potential drivers for the sharp decline of populations.

Be on the lookout for another expedition of specimens from the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History. And thank you for taking the time to help!

— Stacey L. Huber, Digitization Coordinator, McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity

On August 8, 2017, leadership from some of the largest plant-focused communities in Florida met in iDigBio’s Gainesville conference space to plot the future of the WeDigFLPlants project. Attendees represented the major herbaria in Florida, as well as the Florida Native Plant Society, Florida Wildflower Foundation, Florida Master Naturalists Program, Florida Master Gardeners Program, Notes from Nature, Biospex, and iDigBio, the US NSF’s National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections.

The WeDigFLPlants project seeks to engage the public in digital data creation about the million+ plant specimens collected in Florida over the past 200 years for the benefit of science, society, and the flora. These plant specimens are each labelled with the who, what, when, and where from the collection event. About 570 WeDigFLPlants participants have produced 28,000 transcriptions of those labels at Notes from Nature to date.   WeDigFLPlants organizers seek to provide a rich learning (and sometimes social) experience for participants through its dashboard, Twitter account, educational resources (e.g., http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewResourcePerspectivesVideo/Preview/166547 and www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewResourcePrespectiveVideo/Preview/166555), and onsite events during WeDigBio (e.g., https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fsus-wedigflplants-digitization-blitz-fri-tickets-37342927702).

What does the future hold? Expect to see more Notes from Nature expeditions tailored to the interests of the membership of each of Florida’s plant-focused groups. Expect to see more educational modules that incorporate Notes from Nature activities aligned to these groups’ existing education portfolios. And expect to see WeDigFLPlants-branded incentives. We are actively seeking financial sponsors—please let us know if you are interested.

Together we can build the historical baseline with which to understand the current and future diversity and distribution of Florida’s 4700+ species. Thank you, if you have contributed to a WeDigFLPlants expedition. There are currently two active expeditions on Notes from Nature: one focused on the sedges of the Florida Panhandle, and one focused on the grasses of the Florida Peninsula. Join in today!

To learn more about WeDigFLPlants, contact Austin Mast (amast@bio.fsu.edu) or Jillian Goodwin (jvgoodwin@fsu.edu).

This expedition takes a look at the endangered species Oarisma poweshiek, the Poweshiek skipperling. Habitat loss and fragmentation are to blame for its endangered species status. Its habitat consists of tallgrass prairies and prairie fens and much of the original tall grass and native prairie in the United States are gone.

The Poweshiek skipperling is a tiny butterfly with a wingspan of only 1 inch. It is dark brown with orange coloring on the wings and the head. On the underside, its veins are highlighted white, making it appear striped. The historical range for the skipperling ran from Manitoba to Iowa, with populations in Michigan and Wisconsin. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, surveys in 2014 showed that the range has drastically declined, with only a few sites in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Manitoba.

One of the steps in helping conserve the Poweshiek skipperling is research. There is limited information on the life history and habitat of this endangered species. Some researchers are looking into the causes of the species’ decline that has occurred during the past 10 to 20 years. This is where your help is needed. By transcribing museum data labels, the data can be used to generate habitat suitability models across the historic range to look for potential drivers for the sharp decline of populations. Help conserve the Poweshiek skipperling by transcribing!
For more information, please see this link: https://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/insects/posk/index.html

~ Stacey L. Huber

McGuire Center for Lepidoptera & Biodiversity, Florida Museum of Natural History