How Thousands of Phone Snapshots Solved a Flower Colour Mystery Nearly 10,000 People Helped Confirm a Botanical Hunch. Were You One of Them?

Great use of images and data from @inaturalist.bsky.social

Includes link to the full paper; though sadly paywalled.

CC @siobhanleachman.bsky.social

As described, the curry also featuring chickpeas, served in a bowl with rice, yoghurt and coriander leaves garnish. Sunny enough to eat outside again!

Vintage lunch today was a coconut chicken curry, paired with the 2020 Lafazanis Geometria Assyrtiko. #nzv26 #Rockburn #kai

The kakapo cam has a new link after a couple of days of power problems. @digs.bsky.social did the nest check last night. It's just as well he has long arms - the chicks are very mobile now and had parked themselves about as far from the hatch as they could. 😁

Now back down to "a lot"

#30DayChartChallenge Day 21 - Historical
Given the officially declared State of Emergency in Wellington, for this day I am making a time series graph of the Hutt river flows back to the last big weather event. Six weeks ago. (locally- there have been other State of Emergency elsewhere in that time)

Scholarships — SCANZ - Science Communicators Association of New Zealand

#NZ Scholarships to attend the Science Communicators of NZ conference in Ōtautahi #Christchurch 25-26 June

– You do not need to be an existing SCANZ member to apply
– Applications close at 5:00pm on 30 April 2026

www.scanz.co.nz/2026-scholar...
#scicomm #SciCommNZ #SCANZ2026

Borrowing | How to and FAQ FAQ Category about Borrowing.

Hot tip! You can also add the cards of family members (like kids) and flick between them!
my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/faq/borrowin... ^MT

A black-and-white studio portrait photograph of Emma Lucy Braun, the pioneering American botanist and plant ecologist widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists in the study of eastern North American forests. Shown from the shoulders up against a soft, neutral gradient background, Braun appears in her later years with a calm, intelligent gaze directed straight at the viewer. Her white hair is neatly styled and swept back from her face, and she wears delicate round wire-rimmed glasses. A gentle, knowing half-smile softens her expression, conveying quiet authority, warmth, and scholarly poise. She is dressed in a light-colored, pleated blouse with a gathered neckline and a prominent dark floral brooch pinned at the center of her chest; the visible sleeve features subtle decorative patterning. The tight, centered composition focuses entirely on her face and upper torso, creating an intimate and dignified mood that emphasizes intellect and dignity over ornamentation.

Botanist/plant ecologist E. Lucy Braun is one of the most influential ecologists in North American history.

+ First woman President, Ecological Society of America, 1950
+ Helped establish plant ecology as a rigorous academic discipline

She was born #OTD in 1889. #WomenInSTEM #conservation #ecosky

The Water Veneer moth is an aquatic insect. Apparently the caterpillars live underwater and make an underwater cocoon filled with air. Males and only some females apparently fly out of water briefly to mate!

#moth #teamMoth #mothweek2026 #mothweekart26 #mothweek #SciArt #YearOfTheMoth

Kākāpō Cam: Rakiura the kākāpō – 2026 nest YouTube video by Department of Conservation

Have you been watching the #kakapo webcam? After a few power issues it’s back online. I’ll be at the nest in about an hour from now, so tune in then if you’re free! www.youtube.com/live/K_j3aaE...

The Internet Archive provides new home for books and other research materials from CABI’s Egham Research Centre - CABI.org

Yet again, a reminder that the @archive.org is fabulous. www.cabi.org/news-article...

Metservice shared a radar image of where the rain was, it's like just Mount Cook southwards which is crazy localised

77mm in one hour in Berhampore. That’s just an incomprehensible rain intensity anywhere at any time, let alone in Wellington in Autumn. We used to use 7mm an hour as a threshold for “heavy rain”, and this was more than 10 times that.

This is wild. (For those unfamiliar with NZ geography, this storm seems to have deluged the precise boundary of the CBD of the nation's second largest city and NOWHERE ELSE.)

An adult female kākāpō feeding a chick in a nest. Credit: Andrew Digby

#kakapo Esperance with chick Elsie-A2-2026 on Whenua Hou. At a month old the chicks start to get coloured feathers and males will weigh around 1kg - not far off the mother's weight. But she's still less than halfway through raising them in the nest! #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds #wildlife

The youngest #kakapo alive: Awarua-A3, 17 days old today. Despite appearances, she’s doing well. She won’t be leaving the nest until mid-June. It’s a long breeding season! #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds.

At #BHLDay2026, Qiangian Hiris Gu, Ben Hartley & Vincent Smith @nhm-london.bsky.social will share their work transforming the biodiversity literature on BHL into structured, machine-actionable data at a planetary scale. 🧪 🌍️ 🌱

📅 29 April 2-5pm BST | London + online
🎟️ Register now: bit.ly/bhlday2026

An historic illustration of pink flowers, grasses and butterflies

An historic illustration of yellow flowers.

An historic illustration of a water lily

An historic illustration of pink flowers.

🌻 Spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere! To celebrate, we present this spectacular collection of watercolour & pencil illustrations of "British Flowers" by Elizabeth Wharton and Margaret Wharton [1793-1811] on BHL via Oak Spring Garden Foundation: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography... 🧪

An historic illustration of a white bat hanging upside down from a tree branch.

🦇 Happy #BatAppreciationDay! The ghost bat (Macroderma gigas), native to Australia, gets its name from its extremely thin wing membrane, which gives it a ghostly appearance at night. #SciArt: Proc Zool Soc London (1880) on BHL via @nhm-london.bsky.social: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28522650

Totals of the 2026 kākāpō breeding season on the fridge door on Whenua Hou. Credit: Andrew Digby

#kakapo breeding fridge update. With all eggs hatched, the only changes from now will be chicks dying 😕 (And maybe Rimu’s nest). #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds

Just a reminder that the Aotearoa New Zealand Wiki meetup will be happening on SUNDAY the 19th of April - this weekend - from 10am until 11.30am NZST. For more information see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... #Wikipedia #WikiCommons #Wikidata #Wikisource

A kākāpō chick in a bag during a health check. Credit: Sarah Manktelow.

Last week we transferred 4 #kakapo chicks from Whenua Hou to Anchor Island; having moved 5 in March. With a better food supply on Anchor the mothers there can support two chicks per nest better than on Whenua Hou, where the rimu fruit has failed to ripen. 📸 Sarah Manktelow #kakapo2026 #conservation

That looks delicious!

Greater trophic diversity of soil animal communities under agricultural land use and tropical climate - Nature Ecology & Evolution Soil fauna is an important but often neglected component of terrestrial food webs. Here the authors use a large dataset of stable isotope observations to analyse how soil animal trophic diversity vari...

Here the authors use a large dataset of stable isotope observations to analyse how soil animal trophic diversity varies across climates and land-use types and identify potential biotic mechanisms 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Holacanthella paucispinosa on the cover of this month's issue of Nature Ecology and Evolution. Photo by Frank Ashwood

Breaking news: giant springtail from Aotearoa NZ made the cover of @natecoevo.nature.com!

This amazing pic of H. paucispinosa by @frankashwood.bsky.social should lure readers to the global study by @zheng-zhou.bsky.social et al on soil animal trophic diversity 🌍🌿🕷️🪱🪳🧪
www.nature.com/natecolevol/...

The animal kingdom, arranged according to its organization, serving as a foundation for the natural history of animals: London: G. Henderson, 1834-1837. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28028053

The animal kingdom, arranged according to its organization, serving as a foundation for the natural history of animals: London: G. Henderson, 1834-1837. (source: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28028053 #nature #illustration #art

Historical illustration titled "Acari, Myriopoda et Scorpiones hucusque in Italia reperta" (1882-1903) depicting a detailed, colored drawing of a scorpion species labeled "Gamasus Exilis." The main subject is a top-down view of the scorpion with an elongated, oval orange-brown body and eight thin, segmented legs extending outward. Surrounding the central figure are lighter, pencil-sketched anatomical details focusing on limb segments, pincers, and body parts, labeled with numbers for scientific reference. The background is an aged cream paper, reflecting the vintage scientific style of entomological study.

🦂 Acari, Myriopoda et Scorpiones hucusque in Italia reperta
Patavii: Sumptibus Auctoris, [1882-1903]

[Source]

The people who cut the nose off a slice of cheese annoy me in the extreme.

Digitally native species are a necessary shift in taxonomic practice Nature Reviews Biodiversity - Biodiversity science laments how little is known about the planet’s biodiversity, yet routinely discards much of the taxonomic evidence generated during species...

Species descriptions should not be confined to "summary" PDFs only providing access to a fraction of the data underlying the conclusions. We here argue for "digitally native species" built around structured, specimen-linked, machine-actionable evidence from day one. rdcu.be/fcbwh

@tdwg.org #TDWG2026 opportunity! contribute to this #digitalcuration #roundtripping topic at the conference and in the BDJ. @sharifx.bsky.social @nickynicolson.bsky.social @miketrizna.bsky.social @evomri.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy @aguentsch.bsky.social @njdowdy.bsky.social @cabbageleek.bsky.social

Genera avium Brussels: V. Verteneuil & L. Desmet, 1905-1914. https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36872516

Genera avium Brussels: V. Verteneuil & L. Desmet, 1905-1914. (source: https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36872516 #nature #illustration #art