In Costa Rica, 20 lucky and talented school children have gained new bragging rights at the lunch table - they each have a new species named after them. The children won the honor through a wonderfully creative and engaging drawing…
New species descriptions often come one at a time, giving the impression that scientists have most likely described nearly everything on earth. Each new species is just one of the last stragglers, a species rare enough to have hitherto eluded our notice. Yet recent estimates of global…
Prefacing the recent Taxonomic Data Working Group (TDWG) conference in Nairobi, the Biodiversity Heritage Library of Africa gathered fifteen representatives from eleven institutions throughout South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda for a BHL partner workshop. The BHL Africa Workshop was an opportunity to provide training…
A team of botanists, including JRS grantees from the Missouri Botanical Garden and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, took Analamazoatra/Perinet Reserve by storm during a botanical bio-blitz. Following a few intensive training sessions with the Android version of iNaturalist, including a guest lecture from iNaturalist…
Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique boasts a remarkably rich and charismatic community of animals, and a history to match. A PBS series "Gorongosa Park Rebirth of Paradise" premiering in the United States on Tuesday, September 22 (8pm Eastern/7pm Central) documents the ongoing efforts to restore…
Great news this week from the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRI), which released the 2015 Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) Report Card. Drawing on assessments of 248 reef sites along 1000 kilometers of the Caribbean coastlines of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and…
The Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP) has launched a new page on their website to enable everyone around the world to track wolf populations in the Ethiopian highlands. Wolf Mapper, based in the Google product, My Maps, provides interactive, up to date, maps…
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GBIF, has launched surveys for data holders and data users in Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific region countries to improve the application of biodiversity data to policy. This effort will support the GBIF-led Biodiversity Information for…
North American bats got a major boost last month in the form of an international Letter of Intent, signed by the US, Mexico, and Canada, to improve coordination of efforts to conserve bat populations. Recognizing the growing threats to bats,…
On April 15th, 2015, Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its partners launched the most comprehensive checklist ever documented of the plants that occur in the country. The Catalogue of the Plants and Lichens of Colombia, edited by Rodrigo Bernal, S. Robbert Gradstein and…
