Once again, thank you to all the NfN volunteers out there that contributed to our Tiger Beetles 2 expedition. Although, it was a small expedition, it has allowed us to complete the digitization of all our Tiger Beetle specimens for which we have images.

We’ll now shift focus to other groups within the Carabidae (Ground beetles), beginning with the subfamily Trechinae, which includes the hyper diverse ground beetle genus called Bembidion.

Keep an eye out for these new expeditions the first of which will be posted in the next few days.

–Bryan Brunet, PhD

Collections Management Advisor (Natural Sciences), University of Alberta Museums, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium once again seeks the aid of Citizen Scientists. We’d like you to join us for an Expedition through the Adoxaceae (moschatel) family .

While the Adoxaceae has around five genera within its family worldwide, only two – Sambucus and Viburnum — are native to the Southeastern United States.

The genus Sambucus, commonly known as Elderberry, are shrubs that have beautiful, deep colored berries ranging from the rare white and yellow to the more common red, black and blue black. These berries are preceded in the spring by small, dainty flowers. Not only is Elderberry lovely in appearance, but it is also used in wines, jams and syrups!

The genus Viburnum, like Sambucus, has berries, but most species are not edible by people. Viburnum is a garden favorite for its spring blooming flowers, vibrant fall foliage, and fruits relished by wildlife. The coolness factor for Viburnum is elevated when one realizes that one common name, Arrowwood, is not a fiction. Viburnum twigs make very sturdy arrow shafts!

Please help us map these shrubs across the Southeastern United States, and thank you for your company on our Expedition.

To go alongside the launch of the new expedition group Miniature Lives Magnified, we have a whole new set of badges for you to collect.

Transcribe 5 microscope slides and earn the ‘5x zoom’ badge.

Transcribe 50 microscope slides for the ‘50x zoom’ badge.

And become a microscopy master by transcribing 150 microscope slides for the ‘150x zoom’ badge.

A big thanks to Jordan, from Zooniverse, for the artwork.  We hope you love them as much as we do.

Don’t forget to check your Field Book, to see what progress your making on collecting badges and transcribing specimens.

I’m challenging myself to get to the ’50x zoom’ badge today.

Jade (Natural History Museum, London).

Welcome to a new Notes from Nature Project and a series of upcoming Expeditions: Pollinator Plants of Virginia. Pollinator populations and their overall health have declined in recent decades. While much current research is necessarily focused on the health of non-native, domesticated honey-bees and agricultural productivity, thousands of other invertebrate pollinators such as bumble-bees, small solitary bees, butterflies and moths are in need of help, too. In order for researchers to find these small creatures in the wild to monitor their population sizes or to test them for diseases, they must first locate the food plants that are preferred by each pollinator and wait for their research subjects to appear. Many native pollinator species will consume the pollen or nectar of very few plant species; this very choosy feeding behavior is called oligolecty. It also means that these species can die out if their food plants disappear. In this project, we have assembled herbarium specimens from over 100 plant genera that are identified by The Xerces Society as the most important pollinator host-plants in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. By transcribing these herbarium records, you help us develop very fine scale maps of the plants’ locations and flowering times, which can be used by pollinator researchers to find their quarry.

Thanks again, fellow natural historians! You digitized nearly 1,400 specimens of Virginian ant-dispersed plant species between Expedition I and II and closed out the relevant holdings from the Ted R. Bradley Herbarium at George Mason University  The Ant Plants theme is going to rest for a bit as we assemble more ant plant sheets from other herbaria. But, please do not despair. Other herbarium specimens from Virginia will be debuting under a new and different theme – Native Plants for Native Pollinators – stay tuned!

Another expedition is complete for the Plants of Arkansas. Thanks again to all who worked on the Bellflowers (Campanulaceae).  Another critical milestone has been met!

We now have only the Delta and Crowley’s Ridge Flora as an active expedition from Arkansas U.S.A.  The Delta Region is greatly under-explored and under-appreciated area.  This particular project is helping to fill in knowledge gaps at a time when additional field exploration is underway.  Because conversion from natural habitat to row-crop agriculture has been so extensive in this area, finding those places that retain natural vegetation is really important for conservation efforts.  In addition to the Delta Region expedition, expect a series of new expeditions in the coming weeks targeted to @tmarsico’s Dendrology class being taught at Arkansas State University.  For the first time, Notes from Nature will be implemented as a formal study tool for coursework.  Stay tuned for updates on how this aspect of Notes from Nature unfolds.

Thank you to all Notes from Nature contributors that helped with the 1^st Tiger Beetle expedition of the University of Alberta’s E.H. Strickland Entomological Museum. Thanks to your hard work, we now have data for 1000 more specimens digitized! We are all very excited to see that there is such a lively and active group of natural history enthusiasts willing to help make our data available to the world.

This was our first foray into citizen science data transcriptions via Notes from Nature, but there are many more still to come. We have 41000 ground beetle specimens that have yet to be digitized. About 7000 of these are from locations in Canada, 1000 are from the United States, 4000 are from Mexico, 4000 are from Central America and 25000 are from South America. About half of these (mostly those collected north of South America) have been imaged and are waiting to be uploaded to Notes from Nature expeditions. These represent about 1200 species of ground beetles from about 180 different genera.

Stay tuned for our next expedition “UASM Tiger Beetles 2”!

Thanks again,

–Bryan Brunet, PhD

Collections Management Advisor (Natural Sciences), University of Alberta Museums, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Tomorrow we will be rolling out a redesign of the entire Notes from Nature site. The changes are related to the look and feel of the site. This was a collaborative effort by one of our NfN developers at University of Florida and the Visual Designer at the Zooniverse.

We really like our new logo – soon to be revealed- and the overall look and we hope you do too. When the changes go live tomorrow, you will notice changes to all the major parts of the site such as the About and Completed Expeditions pages. The transcription interfaces should look the same.

If you haven’t recently checked out your Field Notebook on Notes from Nature, it would be an excellent time to take a look and get a glimpse of the before and after changes.  Even if you have recently checked it out, still take a peek because we’ve done a full redesign. We were excited to have a working page when we launched in June, and have been making changes along the way.