We wanted to take a moment and acknowledge all the work you have done on our digitization project: Ranges: Mammal Traits from western North America, we are incredibly grateful for your contributions. I also wanted to share a bit about our collections. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is home to about 101,000 cataloged mammal specimens. Our collections date back to the late 1800’s and represent specimens from around the world, with a regional focus on California and the surrounding areas. About half of our terrestrial mammal specimens are from the Ranges geographic focal area, western North America.

As you know, the goal of the Ranges project is to “mobilize” the trait data that has not been uploaded to databases. For our collection this has meant enlisting students, staff, and volunteers to look at specimen tags, verify data in the database, and image tags for individuals that have trait data missing from the database. These images have been used for you to transcribe the data, but they will also be uploaded to our database as part of the specimen record. The imaging work has largely taken place in the collections work spaces, but we have also had the opportunity to do demonstrations and talk with museum visitors about the project.

If you are interested in reading a bit more and seeing some pictures of our team in action, there is a story about the project here. 

Your work in combination with our staff and volunteers has resulted in improved data for:

374 species (from shrews to gophers and weasels to bats) with trait data confirmed for 23,817 specimens and tags imaged and transcribed for 22,670 specimens. Thank you!

Over the weekend Notes from Nature reached another big milestone. We reached 5 million classifications on our current platform. The first version of the Notes from Nature platform received over 1 million classification so that puts us at 6 million for the life of the project!

We first and foremost want to first thank all of our amazing volunteers for getting us and keeping us here! Without you, this project isn’t possible. We also wanted to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation, the organization that has provides us with the vast majority of our funding over the years. The National Science Foundation provides critical funding for projects like ours and without them there’s a good chance we won’t still be here today.

These big milestones are great, but remember that each classification is important and we value each and every volunteer who has helped get us to this point!

Please help us celebrate by visiting Notes from Nature and helping us spread the word. We’ve got lots of fun and interesting things to work on from plants, to bee and mammals.

With gratitude,

The Notes from Nature Team

We have an exciting new expedition in our Labs project. It’s called LightningBug Text Correct and we’ll ask you to utilize the relatively new Text From Subject task. The basic idea is to look at the label image as well the OCR output and correct any issues you see. 

We hope it will be a fun and relatively straightforward task. These labels are unique in that they are not typical label images, but label reconstructions. Unlike many insect specimen images these images are taken with the insect and labels still on the pin using multiple cameras and angles. These label reconstructions are basically models of the labels based on several camera angles taken using the LightningBig system. The text is then read using Google’s OCR tools. You can learn more about the project on their website https://www.lightningbug.tech/ .

Our job now is to assess how well the text came out and see where we can make improvement to the label text itself. For example in the label below there would be no corrections since the text was captured correctly. Note that the object coming out between the 7 and 0 is the specimen pin. These images are captured while the specimen and labels are still on the pin so you will this frequently in this dataset.

You can give it a try on our Notes from Nature Labs project.

Our newest expedition from California Academy of Sciences is Plants of the Southern California Coast.

The coast of southern California is populated with coastal mountain ranges, chaparral, and sage scrubland. The Transverse Ranges on the coast include the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, which can rise above 10,000 ft (around 3,000 m). Inland, the habitat transitions into arid and semi-arid desert climates that overlap with the range of many California desert natives. The Channel Islands off the coast of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties also offer separate and unique habitats where several plant species unique to the islands can be found. In addition to harboring its own regional plants, the southern California coast overlaps with the ranges of many plants found in neighboring Mexico and Arizona. Here are a few interesting species of plants that can be found in this region:

Stachys bullata – Also known as California hedgenettle, it is a member of the mint family, Lamiaceae. It can be found up and down the California coast, including in the coastal valleys of the Channel Islands. The California hedgenettle prefers to grow in damp and shaded areas.

Datura wrightii – A plant significant to Indigenous California culture, Datura wrightii is also called Sacred Datura and is a member of the family Solanaceae. Its natural range includes northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States. At night, Datura wrightii is often pollinated by hawk moths. This plant was used as a religious hallucinogen by the Chumash and Tongva people of Southern California. (Warning!: Do not try this; it can cause seizures and functional blindness.) This flower also appeared prominently in the art of Georgia O’Keeffe, with one painting of Datura wrightii selling for $45 million. That’s a pricey plant!

Cordylanthus rigidus – A member of the family Orobanchaceae, it is also known by the common name stiffbranch bird’s beak. This plant is native to California and Baja California and can be found in coastal mountains and flats. This plant is unusual in that it is parasitic and steals resources from other plants instead of relying completely on photosynthesis.

You can try out Plants of the Southern California Coast here: https://bit.ly/4cBICKK

Despite much of the San Francisco Bay Area being generally urbanized today, that wasn’t always the case. This expedition looks into the past with newly imaged plant specimens from our collections that were collected between 1800 and 1935. It is called: 1800-1935: Bay Area Collections. In this expedition you can also see collections made by prominent early Bay Area botanists, including Alice Eastwood, William Dudley,  Albert Kellog, S.B Parish, Katherine Brandegee and more. Today more than 1200 plant species can be found in the greater Golden Gate Recreation Area, and the San Francisco Bay Area to this day boasts a level of access to nature and open space that surpasses most metropolitan areas in the United States. Bay Area habitats occupy a wide range , including coastal redwood forests, chaparral, deciduous forests , rocky serpentine outcrops  and coastal scrubland and more. Here are a few species you can find in this expedition and around the Bay Area:

Penstemon heterophyllus: Sometimes known as bunch leaf penstemon , is a member of the family Plantaginaceae. This species of plant is a California native, and is an excellent drought resistant addition to native plant gardens. It is known to grow in California chaparral habitats as well as alongside live oak forests.

Plagiobothrys nothofulvus: Also called rusty popcornflower , is a member of the family Boraginaceae. Versatile, it can be found in coastal sage scrub, woodlands , meadows and wetland habitats. This species serves as food for many species of insect and mammal who eat the seeds and flowers as well as being a source of nectar for bees and butterflies.

Castilleja densiflora: Sometimes known as owlclover is native to california and can be found up and down the California coast. It is a member of the family Orobanchaceae and in the genus Castilleja alongside other familiar flowering plants like Indian Paintbrush – Castilleja coccinea. Several subspecies of Castilleja densiflora exist including ssp. Obispoensis, only found in San Luis Obispo County.

And to put some faces to the names of early Bay Area Botanists …

Alice Eastwood:  b. 1859 – d. 1953: Born in Toronto Canada, Alice Eastwood was a self-taught botanist who first started collecting in Colorado after immigrating to the United States with her family. She first worked as a teacher in Denver, but her botany collections caught the attention of Katherine Brandegee at the California Academy of Sciences who hired her to work in San Francisco in 1891. By 1892 she was promoted to joint curator and by 1894 appointed as head of Botany where she served a long tenure until 1949. She was responsible for extensive collections in California and for saving important specimens during the 1906 earthquake and fire. She published more than 310 articles in her career , served as editor for the journal Zoe, and collected in many states and traveled to partner institutions around the world to expand her work.

William Dudley: b. 1849 – d. 1911: Born in New Guilford Connecticut, William Dudley studied and received a bachelor’s in 1874 and master’s degree in 1876 from Cornell University. He later went on to teach at Cornell and various other universities on the east coast until being hired to Stanford University in 1892 as head of systematic biology. William Dudley was an environmental activist key in preserving the coastal redwood and advised the establishment of the national forest system in California. William Dudley later died in 1911 from sicknesses caught while conducting research in Iran and Egypt.

Katherine Brandegee: b. 1844 – d. 1920 Was born in Tennessee as Katherine Layne but moved to California with her family during the California gold rush of 1849. After the death of her first husband in 1874 from alcoholism, she enrolled soon after in U.C Berkeley, becoming the third ever woman to attend medical school there. In 1878 she received her M.D. and became a doctor, although chose to pursue Botany instead in 1879. She became a member of the California Academy sciences and became curator of botany in 1883. She later met her second husband Townshend Brandegee who shared her love of botany in 1889. The two later collaborated for many years while she served as botany curator. She was responsible for the co-founding of the academic journal Zoe which allowed academic independence from east coast universities. She went on to hire her successor as curator, Alice Eastwood in 1892 . She and her husband later donated 76,000 specimens to U.C Berkeley before her death in 1920.

Albert Kellogg: b. 1813 – d. 1887 Born in New Hartford Connecticut, Albert Kellogg first studied medicine and received an M.D from Transylvania University in Lexington Kentucky. Through the 1840s he practiced medicine and collected and illustrated plants as an amateur botanist in New England and the South East before moving to california in 1848. He later continued to practice medicine and run a pharmacy in San Francisco until he later refocused his career on botany and was one of the founding members of the California Academy of Sciences in 1852. He went on to describe more than 200 species of plants, and wrote extensively on california forests. He was hired as surgeon and botanist by the US government to survey Alaska in 1867. Albert Kellogg was one of the first members of the academy to advocate for opening membership to women in 1853, later on hiring Catherine Brandegee to succeed him as curator of Botany.

Visit the 1800-1935: Bay Area Collections expedition on the CAS Plants to Pixels project.

October 10-13 marked the 15th time Notes from Nature has participated in WeDigBio. The, now twice a year, event is great time to learn more about what the natural history museum community is doing by participating in a symposium, interacting with volunteers and generally supporting our data providers with expeditions and special events.

For the October 2024 event, Notes from Nature recorded over 21,700 classifications. We are so honored and appreciative of all the support. There is still lots of expeditions to work on, so please stop by anytime and help us spread the word!

Stay tuned for the the exact dates of the next WeDigBio which will take place in April 2025.

— The Notes from Nature team

Many thanks to all that have been participating in WeDigBio. We are in awe of your contributions! Over 12,600 classifications have been recorded so far. Capture the Collections had another huge day with over 2,300 classifications. We are also very excited to see all the interest in our newest project Ranges Mammal Traits from western North America .

We are excited to see what Day 3 brings.

With gratitude,

– The Notes from Nature Team

It was a fun and exciting first day of WeDigBio. In total Notes from Nature received over 7,000 classifications! We so appreciated everyone that contributed.

Our symposium titled How is AI Being Used in Biodiversity Efforts? was very well attended with over 100 registered participants. Many thanks to the organizers and speakers.

Please visit Notes from Nature today and help us spread the word about this important event.

— The Notes from Nature team

We wanted to remind you that WeDigBio starts in one week on October 10th and continues through October 13. WeDigBio or Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections, is a global data campaign, virtual science festival, and local outreach opportunity, all rolled into one. The annual, 4-day WeDigBio events mobilize participants to create digital data about biodiversity specimens. You can learn more at https://wedigbio.org/

Notes from Nature will be hosting lots of expeditions that you can work on from anywhere. Just head over to Notes from Nature select a project of interest and then choose one of the expeditions to work on. Every record you enter makes a huge difference!

Lastly, please see out previous post about a special WeDigBio symposium being held on October 10th at 2pm central

Thanks,

The Notes from Nature Team

How is AI Being Used in Biodiversity Efforts?

The WeDigBio board is pleased to announce a one-hour symposium, “How is AI Being Used in Biodiversity Efforts? on October 10 from 2-3pm Central Time (3-4pm Eastern Time). This session will include three different examples of how AI can be used in service of digitization and conservation efforts, and how its use is being monitored. As the presence of AI in all walks of life becomes more common, the use of AI (both the why and the how) is not always clear. In this session, three researchers will share how they use AI in their work, why it is useful for them, and the methods they have in place to ensure data quality.

Schedule

2:00–2:05 Welcome! by Samantha Blickhan (Zooniverse)

2:05–2:20 The evolution of AI as a tool for conservation, by Sarah Huebner (Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute)

2:20–2:35 Phenobase: a central global database of plant phenology by integrating in situ observatory and image-derived phenology data, by Daijiang Li (University of Arizona)

2:35–2:50 Leveraging ground truth Smithsonian data to evaluate AI tools (Smithsonian OCIO Data Science Lab and Office of Digital Transformation)

2:50–3:00 Panel Discussion

The 4-day WeDigBio event runs from October 10-13. WeDigBio stands for Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections. To learn more about WeDigBio, visit wedigbio.org.

Register to get a Zoom link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-is-ai-being-used-in-biodiversity-efforts-tickets-1033701638427