Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
The home of the Museum’s citizen science programme is its Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity, where we develop a series of surveys and activities that enable anyone in the UK to contribute to the Museum’s scientific research. But the Centre has a wider purpose to support both new and experienced naturalists to develop their skills, meet like minded …
Continue reading “At the Centre of Museum citizen science | Take Part”
In our previous Wildlife Garden blog we reviewed some of the new, and some of the returning species last year, focusing mainly on moths and bees – with a small mention of beetles. Eleven additional species of beetle were found in the Wildlife Garden in 2017 and here Stephanie Skipp, a former Identification Trainer for …
Continue reading “Wildlife Garden | Species review of the year 2017 – part 2: mostly beetles”
This week HLF Identification Trainer of the Future, Anthony Roach, introduces us to the marvellous diversity of seaweeds on Britain’s shores and shows you how you can contribute to citizen science by recording them as part of the Big Seaweed Search. Seaweeds are incredibly diverse and beautiful organisms. They are strong biological indicators of the health of …
Continue reading “If you go down to the beach today | Big Seaweed Search”
Sally Hyslop, one of the trainees on our Identification Trainers for the Future programme, gives an update on the results of our 9-year-long Bluebell Survey: The arrival of bluebells each spring is an iconic sight. The floods of nodding colour characterise our ancient woodlands, support a commotion of insect life and make up an important …
Continue reading “Native and non-native bluebells | Bluebell Survey”
Advances in DNA sequencing technology are occurring at an incredible speed and Kevin Hopkins is one of the Museum’s Next Generation Sequencing Specialists working with the sequencing technologies used at the Museum to produce relevant data for our Microverse research. “The challenge is being able to bring together the technology, often developed in biomedical settings, …
Continue reading “Next generation DNA sequencing of microorganisms | The Microverse”