@unisepala.bsky.social
Lifelong learner. #curation of digital collections @rbgkew.bsky.social, ~8m. plants + fungi! #naturalhistory #biodiversity informatics #conservation (she/her) โฎ
A scientist examines germinated seeds in a petri dish, in Kew's Millennium Seed Bank. Photo by Sebastian Kettley.
Just 10 days left to join us on the Millennium Seed Bank Seed Conservation Techniques course - running online on 13-24 October ๐ฑ
We'll cover the ins and outs of seed storage behaviour, genetic diversity sampling, seed bank design, and much more โ๏ธ๐งช๐๏ธ
โฐ July 31 2025!
www.kew.org/science/trai...
A split-screen image. The left side shows a rhinoceros mother and calf in a savanna landscape with scattered trees. The right side depicts a forest fire scene with orange flames and silhouetted trees against a dark sky. Text reads: "Biodiversity is in crisis" followed by: "1 million plant and animal species risk extinction Ecosystems are collapsing Misinformation slows progress." "Trust the science. Conserve, restore and sustainably use biodiversity."
โBiodiversity is not decliningโ is a claim you may have heard. But science says otherwise. ๐
The @ipbes.netย #GlobalAssessment reveals 1 million plant & animal species are at risk of extinction. Misinformation clouds the crisis.
Rely on trusted research to understand our shared challenges. ๐๐งช
Great article on the history of & specimens collected by the Lady Franklin Bay expedition. I loved the use & the crediting of @bionomia.net (which uses #Wikidata for deceased collectors) for assisting in the uncovering of more specimens from that expedition. doi.org/10.1002/ppp3... #Bionomia
29.06.2025 21:42 โ ๐ 27 ๐ 14 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 1
Specimens being shelved in Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew's Fungarium.
Each newly digitised sheet is a moment of discovery - from pressed rainforest orchids to fungi collected on 19th-century expeditions.
These records help us understand our planet's biodiversity and how itโs changing ๐๐
Through the power of digitisation, millions of Kew's plant and fungal specimens have stepped out of the archives and into the hands of the world ๐ฟ
Explore the new Data Portal yourself and uncover centuries of botanical history - now just a click away!
www.kew.org/read-and-wat...
A pink sheet of carbon paper, roughly A5 in size. It is a template for 'Post Office Telegraphs' and has been filled in by hand in pencil. It was sent from Bayley Balfour at Trafalgar Square in London to Sir Joseph Hooker at Kew and reads: 'Arrived tonight rather done up from feva ague and long journey shall try and run down tomorrow forenoon shall you be at home'. The paper is bound in a volume with other papers, whose corners and writings are covered underneath.
A printed template which has been completed by hand in ink. The template text reads: 'Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh... As Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, I beg to convey to you my best acknowledgments for the undermentioned contribution, viz.:' It has been filled in by hand to be dated 'Xmas 1880' and specifies that 'One plant of Begonia Socotrina which is a valuable addition to our collections' was received. It is signed by John Padler and is addressed to John Smith at Kew.
![A newspaper cutting adhered to a guard paper in a bound volume. Someone has written in ink the title of the newspaper it has been taken from: 'Egyptian Gazette, Alexandria, 22 June 1880'. The section of the article that has been photographed reads: 'Dr. Schweinfurth, whose departure for Socotra was announced in our columns on 23rd February 1881, returned to Saez on 19th inst. The doctor's account of his trip to Socotra and his stay on the island is highly interesting, and we trust to his kindness to enable us to give our readers some further details later on. In the meantime the following brief notes furnished to us may prove of interest. The doctor made the voyage from Aden to Socotra in a native vessel, he does not appear to have very pleasant recollections of this voyage, which lasted for one month. On the voyage the vessel called at Shugra, Bolhaf, and el Hami, after which the course was set across the Gulf of Aden from Ras Sharma to Socotra. At Socotra Dr Schweinfurth remained for a month, making daily investigations into the rich flora of the [...]. Vegetation is very luxuriant [...].](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6h2nzrepsboow5qu42xtebgn/bafkreichgadz2yispvthcqduhnqtz7dsbcv6b6trctis7zqftfm4xkoh6a@jpeg)
A newspaper cutting adhered to a guard paper in a bound volume. Someone has written in ink the title of the newspaper it has been taken from: 'Egyptian Gazette, Alexandria, 22 June 1880'. The section of the article that has been photographed reads: 'Dr. Schweinfurth, whose departure for Socotra was announced in our columns on 23rd February 1881, returned to Saez on 19th inst. The doctor's account of his trip to Socotra and his stay on the island is highly interesting, and we trust to his kindness to enable us to give our readers some further details later on. In the meantime the following brief notes furnished to us may prove of interest. The doctor made the voyage from Aden to Socotra in a native vessel, he does not appear to have very pleasant recollections of this voyage, which lasted for one month. On the voyage the vessel called at Shugra, Bolhaf, and el Hami, after which the course was set across the Gulf of Aden from Ras Sharma to Socotra. At Socotra Dr Schweinfurth remained for a month, making daily investigations into the rich flora of the [...]. Vegetation is very luxuriant [...].
In 1880, botanist Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour journeyed to the remote island of Socotra - now Yemen - seeking its unique flora.
Our archives preserve his letters, telegraphs & press clippings from the expedition: a window into early plant exploration.
Take a look! ๐
๐ #KewLA
Today we launched a small service on JSTOR to help expert researchers get bulk access to bibliographic data and full text content. A fun part: you can go download 12M+ metadata records bulk in one file, right now: www.jstor.org/ta-support
16.06.2025 21:53 โ ๐ 52 ๐ 26 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
Foto: Vegetaciรณn de tundra en Sydkap, interior del Scoresby Sund, este de Groenlandia. Autor: Hannes Grobe (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hgrobe). Licencia: CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en)
Diagrama de flujo simplificado del proceso utilizado para depurar una metacolecciรณn de registros de plantas vasculares de GBIF. Las ocurrencias de GBIF se descargaron aplicando filtros predicados (ocurrencias de Groenlandia, solo traqueรณfitos, solo registros no fรณsiles, incluyendo especรญmenes de herbario y observaciones humanas, y solo ocurrencias con archivos multimedia), y se extrajeron los nombres รบnicos de ocurrencias resultantes.
Crear un #herbario digital global exige armonizar millones de registros con nomenclaturas dispares. Este estudio presenta un flujo de trabajo que se utilizรณ para estandarizar 177.138 registros de @gbif.org procedentes de 88 fuentes de datos y 96 datasets:
โถ๏ธ doi.org/10.1002/ppp3... ๐
Did you know that shade-grown coffee plantations can be powerful allies against climate change and biodiversity loss, AND support farming families who rely on coffee for their income? โ๐ณ
Come with us to Mexico where our partnership project is shaping these benefits ๐
www.kew.org/read-and-wat...
In honour of International Archives Day, join Isabel, one of Kewโs Assistant Archivists! ๐๐
She takes you behind the scenes as she spends her day sorting records, assisting visitors, and showing you the variety of work that comes with the archives ๐
#InternationalArchivesDay
Happy #Pride month! This #FungiFriday we are going on a fungal foray through the pride flag. There have been many iterations since its original conception in 1978, including the Intersex-Inclusive flag by Valentino Vecchietti โ which we have recreated in fungal fashion for the LGBTQ myco-maniacs
06.06.2025 17:00 โ ๐ 66 ๐ 18 ๐ฌ 2 ๐ 0Digitised collections at @rbgkew.bsky.social reveal plant collecting trends during the First World War
30.05.2025 07:57 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 1
Cream coloured graphic with a colour wheel and pink text
๐ Last call for registrations to the webinar: Introducing the Darwin Core Data Package!
Join us as we share updates on a new data model for GBIF and exciting changes proposed for the Darwin Core standard!
๐ 2 June 2025 14:00 - 15:00 CEST
Register here: ๐ gbif.link/DwC-webinar
@tdwg.org
NEW! You can now access MILLIONS of our dried plant & fungal specimens via our new Data Portal!
The official release comes as we continue to digitise our entire collection, some of which were collected by Chares Darwin himself! ๐ฟ
Read more & check it out ๐งช www.kew.org/read-and-wat... #PlantScience
Over 5.5 millon records available! This is really something ๐
28.05.2025 14:40 โ ๐ 5 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
We MUST preserve the Earth's #biodiversity, but we MUST also protect biodiversity knowledge. #BHLib holds 500+ years โ 63 million pages โ of #OpenAccess biodiversity knowledge. BHL's future is uncertain... blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/04/new-... #ILoveBHL #InternationalBiodiversityDay ๐งช
22.05.2025 19:31 โ ๐ 10 ๐ 7 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 1
A tray containing dried fungal specimens with sponge-like textures, stored in Kewโs Fungarium collection.
MAJOR MILESTONE for fungal science! ๐๐ป
Our entire Fungarium - 1.1 million dried fungi specimens - is now fully imaged!๐1/4
ow.ly/w9JX50VT9FA
A beautiful 1930s poster advertising Kew Gardens.
1936 poster by Edward Bawden, for London transport. When I think about the future books I want to write, I often think Iโd like to do a similar thing with words to what Bawden did with ink in the middle years of the 20th Century.
15.05.2025 10:13 โ ๐ 102 ๐ 12 ๐ฌ 3 ๐ 0
The Biodiversity Heritage Library has just surpassed 63 million pages! Spanning 1469โ2025, BHL provides invaluable #OpenAccess to the foundation of our understanding of biodiversity. ๐ ๐ ๐ฑ #ILoveBHL #BHLib โก๏ธ www.biodiversitylibrary.org
28.04.2025 00:39 โ ๐ 58 ๐ 19 ๐ฌ 2 ๐ 0
Latest update about the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).
Get in contact with the BHL team with your comments and ideas #ILoveBHL
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/04/new-...
Seed banking is crucial to safeguarding threatened plants from extinction, but seeds can be surprisingly fussy, as I learned in my latest for @knowablemag.bsky.social โ๏ธ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ผ๐บ
Featuring @naomibot.bsky.social @rbgkew.bsky.social #plantconservation #botanicalgardens
knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...
These days we're busy sequencing the DNA of thousands of fungi species held within our Fungarium collection - transforming our knowledge of this important kingdom of life even further! ๐งฌ๐งช๐
You can find more about that right here ๐
www.kew.org/science/our-...
Study area showing the distribution and number of vegetation plots sampled across time, principal component analysis, location of sampling plots, and change in climate conditions (A). (B) Principal component analysis (PC1, PC2, and PC3) depicting the climate and soil chemistry and texture space available in the study area. (B and C) Location of the sampling plots in the environmental space (B) and change in climate conditions (1980 to 1990 versus 2010 to 2020) in the plot network (C). In (B), PC1 is mainly loaded by the MCWD (โ0.527) and VPD (โ0.515), PC2 by Tmean (โ0.465) and soil CEC (0.524), and PC3 by soil clay percentage (โ0.535) and soil sand percentage (0.486). In (C), the vertical dotted lines indicate zero change. Brown colors depict increases in temperature and drier conditions for MCWD and VPD or increased drought intensity for the SPEI. Blue colors depict an increase in water availability. In MCWD, larger positive values indicate higher water stress. Climate data were derived from the TerraClimate project (48) and soil data from SoilGrids (https://soilgrids.org/)
What do we do?
The authors say we canโt just fight climate change, we also need to protect these forests right now.
That means stopping deforestation, helping ecosystems bounce back, and backing Indigenous stewardship.
๐ฃ Action isnโt optional - itโs urgent.
A screenshot of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) website homepage
Today we celebrate the incredible biodiversity of our planet โ and the power of #OpenAccess to protect it. The Biodiversity Heritage Library makes over 62 million pages of biodiversity knowledge freely available to all. ๐ biodiversitylibrary.org
#EarthDay #EarthDay2025 #Biodiversity #BHLib
Herbaria are collections of preserved plants, and have been called โplant mummiesโ as specimens usually turn brown, looking somewhat unappealing.
Join us at the Linnean Society on 15 May to hear from Maura Flannery about the many reasons herbaria are worth keeping.
www.eventbrite.co.uk...
DNA sequences as type meeting at Westerdijk - is today the day that we change life as you knew it? Cobus Visagie kicks it up a gear
07.04.2025 08:53 โ ๐ 17 ๐ 7 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
Naturalists' Notebooks exhibition at the lovely Linnean Society, London (11 March-20 September 2025, Tuesdays to Fridays).
@linneansociety.bsky.social
collage of biological drawings on a green background
๐ฝAn a-maize-ing #webinar opportunity to discuss #agrobiodiversity across GBIF ๐ฃ
We are seeking perspectives from GBIF nodes and delegations, data publishers and users, and other industry professionals who work across the field. ๐ฉโ๐ฌ
โฐ30 April 2025 14:00 - 15:30 CEST
๐www.gbif.org/event/t...
green graphic with various biological drawings
๐ฅ Better than the original: New SQL-based service enables download of occurrence data cube
GBIF has enabled an easy-to-use service for creating and downloading species occurrence cubes based on GBIF-mediated data.
Collaborators: @b-cubed.eu led by @inbo.be
gbif.link/data-cubes
Not just the USA
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
