Getting students involved in biodiversity informatics

This is a guest post by Jana Vamosi, the Director of the University of Calgary Herbarium. The University of Calgary got involved in Canadensys this year (see also the IPT resource webpage), through a project designed for students to learn about species distribution modeling. We wanted students to understand all components of species distribution modeling, […]

Biodiversity Informatics without borders: Uruguay, here we came

This is a guest post by Andrés Carvajales from the Uruguayan Ministry of Environment/Dirección Nacional de Medio Ambiente, one the main investigators of the GBIF Uruguay portal. 2015 has been an exciting year for biodiversity information management in Uruguay. Together with SiB Colombia, SiB Brazil and Canadensys, the Participant Node of GBIF in Uruguay has engaged in […]

The Erosion of Collections-Based Science: Alarming Trend or Coincidence?

The post below originally appeared on The Plant Press, October 28, 2014 and is gratefully reproduced here with permission from Vicki Funk and Gary Krupnick. From Plant Press, Vol. 17, No. 4, October 2014. A Curator’s PerspectiveBy Vicki A. Funk* Update: Editor’s Note – The phrase ‘A Curator’s Perspective’ was intended to convey that the […]

An indoor field trip: visiting Canada’s national spider collection

This is a guest post by Dr. Christopher Buddle that originally appeared on his blog, Arthropod Ecology. Last week I traveled up to Ottawa with two of my students – our goal was to visit the Arachnid collection at the Canadian National Collection of Insects (CNCI) (and Arachnids and Nematodes). The spider collection is housed […]

How (not) to design a checklist

This guest post by David Baxter originally appeared on the One2Many blog. Last week the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and some other local organizations coordinated a Bioblitz in Rouge Park, an urban wilderness park in Toronto. In a sentence, a bioblitz is an event where expert biologists, naturalists, and volunteers all come together in an […]

How many species?

This guest post by Terry Wheeler originally appeared on the Lyman Entomological Museum blog. One of the fundamental rules of running a business is that you have to keep track of your inventory. If you don’t know what’s in the warehouse, or who works for you, you’re not going to get very far as a […]