🌍 The 41st SPNHC Annual Meeting is coming to the African continent for the first time! Join natural history professionals in Cape Town, South Africa, from 7 to 11 September 2026. ➡️ Check out our latest news announcement for further details: nhcm.pensoft.net/news/1404 #SPNHC2026

SPNHC 2026 - South Africa | The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections

September 7-11, 2026 Cape Town, South Africa Hosted by the Iziko South African Museum Contact: spnhc.conference@gmail.com Home Register Draft Program Workshops Field Trips Gala Dinner Accommodations…

spnhc.org

Proof of the 40-year old Bandelt-Dress conjecture on the maximum quartet distance between phylogenetic trees (and an interesting connection to independence testing). arxiv.org/abs/2608.03542

The maximum quartet distance between phylogenetic trees

The quartet distance counts the four-leaf subsets on which two binary phylogenetic trees display different topologies. We prove that its maximum over trees on $n$ leaves is $(2/3+o(1))\binom{n}{4}$, r...

arxiv.org

🌍 Meet the Phoenix Species Project, a new global effort to help recover 100 of the world's most threatened species. Launched by @bezosearthfund.org & @rewildorg.bsky.social, support from Leonardo Dicaprio, Age of Union & the Todd Graves Family Foundation. Follow along: phoenixspeciesproject.org

8/ I'm sure I'm explaining it badly. But my point is I accidently created a skill that actually searched and did screening at a level and cost that often if not always found all the true gold standard then it fit the boolean around it! A human librarian would not be so through in the first step

been meditating for the last couple days on how the job of data{viz, journalism, etc} is 90% schlepping the data, which nobody wants to pay for because the thing that would convince them to pay is the actual visualization, which is the cheap part

dorian@doriantaylor.com · last wk.

like my motto for the last two literal decades has been "make things. make sense." as in fabricate artifacts that elicit comprehension. what i have found, historically, is that even teeing up to do that is often a fairly heavy speculative lift that almost nobody wants to pay for.

Be a dipterist. Be in Costa Rica for #FlySchool2026. See a muscoid #fly perching on a leaf. Tell student so they can collect it. Success!! Wait a minute 🤔 That's not a fly, but weevil mimicking one! This was so convincing, even rapidly moving & poking its wings out 🥰 #Curculionidae: cf. #Mnemynurus

Reminder that this role closes on Sunday 2 August, so there are just a few days left to get an application in!

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand@wikimediaaotearoa.bsky.social · 2w ago

This isn't the kind of job listing you see very often! 👀 Our friends at Auckland Museum are looking for a Wikimedian in Residence to join the team! Get more information and apply via Seek: nz.seek.com/job/93393322

From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation iucn.org/news/202607/...

From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums

The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation: a formal acknowledgement that natural history museums,...

iucn.org

What can a scientific journal reveal about a changing island? In our latest #BHLat20 story, Dr Sally Bryant explores 175+ years of Tasmania’s environments, cultures and politics through the "Papers and Proceedings of the #RoyalSocietyofTasmania": blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/07/rst-... 🧪 📖 🌱

Fantastic artwork by Peter Trusler en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T...

Rod Page@rdmpage.bsky.social · 2w ago

New in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social are the chapters of "Vertebrate palaeontology of Australasia", including one of my favourite images, a giant goanna chasing a mihirung (Genyornis) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39941042

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

Over the last 18 months @thneed.bsky.social and I have been experimenting with being Wikipedians (or Wikimedians) in Residence at conferences—photographing academics, checking they and their papers are in Wikidata, and improving Wikipedia articles related to their research.

New in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social are the chapters of "Vertebrate palaeontology of Australasia", including one of my favourite images, a giant goanna chasing a mihirung (Genyornis) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39941042

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

Jordan@jordanpfot.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Have you read this? www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

At the big Moth event tonight at @amnh.org people were asking about the awesome art by @fievelw.bsky.social on display! Check out #YearoftheMoth for all the awesome art from the Moth Challenge!

PL Weng@fievelw.bsky.social · 2w ago

Officially start of moth week #SciArt challenge! In conjunction with #YearOfTheMoth . . Here's no. 27 - the Somber Carpet moth (Disclisioprocta stellata) 🕶️ #somber #carpet #moth #teamMoth #mothweek2026 #mothweekart26 #mothweek mothing with @dinalab.bsky.social @amnh.org

1/ 🛠️ Our July update is here - and it's a technical one! New features for citations, search, submission, and more. Here's what's new in #Pathoplexus 👇 🔗 Full post: pathoplexus.org/news/2026-07...

new paper in @molecology.bsky.social from MVLS-DTP @uofgmvls.bsky.social research of @teamlizard.bsky.social 's J Smout 🧬 gene expression & alternative splicing in a viviparous lizard; new candidate genes + some known from other amniotes 👀🦎 @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Gene Expression and Alternative Splicing Throughout the Reproductive Cycle of a Viviparous Lizard Reveal Novel Genes for Pregnancy and Convergence With Squamates and Mammals

Squamate pregnancy is an important topic in reproductive and evolutionary biology, as it provides insight to amniote live-bearing that is not mammalian. Gene regulation in squamates is poorly charact...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations

Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics

doi.org

Check out our study combining Euryapteryx moa mtDNA and morphometrics to understand drivers of population structure in this once great bird

Biological Journal of the Linnean Society@biojlinnsoc.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Moa a thing or two about extinct species? Using ancient mitochondrial genetics & morphometric analyses of moa leg bones, the species diversity & variation of this once great bird were investigated, revealing the role of climate change on populations! 🌍🧪👇

Gall of the week is cause by the tephritid 'picture-wing fly' Urophora cardui on thistles, Cirsium spp. Male and female fly photos by Malcolm Storey, gall photo unknown.

As I explore how to curate @boldsystems.bsky.social data I keep coming across "interesting" taxonomy, such as two research groups giving the same name (Tropiocolotes hormozganensis) to the same species in the same year! One paper is doi.org/10.11646/zoo..., the other is zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoo...

Welcome, Senckenberg! Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (@sgn.one) has joined BHL as our newest Member, contributing specialized library collections that will help strengthen global access to biodiversity literature. 🧪 🐞 🌱 Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/07/senc...

It was a pleasure to work with @nathanjaybaker.bsky.social and @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social on this long-term insect time-series. The megadiversity of #DarkTaxa is a serious blind spot for #biodiversity monitoring - by focusing on well-known groups, we neglect the vast majority of species. 🧪🦟🪰

Nathan Jay Baker@nathanjaybaker.bsky.social · 3w ago

Insect decline usually focuses on species we can name. But "dark taxa" like true flies kept revealing new species over 37-years of sampling a German stream, while well-studied mayflies/stoneflies/caddisflies plateaued with far fewer individuals. doi.org/10.1111/icad... @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social

A forklift is a tool that a single human uses to move objects many times her own body weight, provided that the object meets certain criteria, and that the environment is suitable for operating a forklift. AI agents are information forklifts.

I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned https://en.andros.dev/blog/0b8e451e/i-joined-the-indieweb-heres-what-i-learned/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966984

I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned | Andros Fenollosa

Driven by curiosity, I decided to find out what the IndieWeb tag that kept showing up on some blogs and Mastodon toots was all about. I quickly discov

en.andros.dev

This was actually meant for a keynote but was a bit long. Still it does reflect my feeling that we need a more holistic view of search rather than assume one community has all the answers to AI search

Nicole Hennig@nic221.bsky.social · 3w ago

AI Search Is Rebundling Everything Libraries Know About Discovery - Aaron Tay aarontay.substack.com/p/eleven-ways-… (great, thoughtful overview) #AI #libraries #search

Added a small tweak to BOLD View that displays #datacitation for @boldsystems.bsky.social datasets, for example DS-ININD20 boldview.iphylo.org/recordset/DS... is cited by doi.org/10.1007/s110.... This provides context for a dataset (e.g., why did people do this barcoding?).

DNA barcoding of insects from India: Current status and future perspectives - Molecular Biology Reports

Insect fauna occupy the largest proportion of animal biodiversity on earth, but the assessment or quantification in terms of species diversity is far from complete. Several recent studies have demonstrated the rapid pace at which insect population decline is occurring. There is an urgent need to document and quantify the diversity of insect fauna for a proper understanding of terrestrial ecosystems. This can be achieved by using modern technology to identify species much faster than relying on traditional methods alone. In line with this, the molecular approach through DNA barcoding coupled with morphological identification needs to be focused and accelerated. The present paper describes the current status of barcoding of insect species in India along with the gaps that need to be remedied. This analysis shows that barcoded specimens cover a very meagre proportion of less than 3.73% of the known taxa/described species and the most represented orders are Lepidoptera and Hemiptera followed by Diptera and Coleoptera. There is a need to expedite insect species discovery and documentation in a collaborative mode between traditional taxonomists and molecular biologists, to accomplish the DNA barcoding of all known insect taxa from India.

doi.org

Help shape the future of BHL 🌱 As we begin to modernise the BHL platform, we’re inviting BHL users to share their experiences through a 3–5 minute survey. Your responses will directly inform our priorities, identify problems, guide improvements, and shape a better BHL experience: bit.ly/4fpc75D 🧪

BHL User Experience

BHL is beginning a major modernisation of its platform. We’d like users to help shape what comes next. This 3–5 minute survey asks about how you use BHL and the improvements you’d like to see. Your r...

bit.ly

A brief report on the 'Hacking the archive' workshop I gave recently at the University of Edinburgh with slides and resources: https://updates.timsherratt.org/2026/07/15/hacking-the-archive-glam-labs.html #glam #digitalHumanities

On 24 June I gave a ‘Hacking the archive’ workshop at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. The workshop was organised by the EFI, the National Library of Scotland, and the IIPC. It preceded the GLAM Labs Futures conference, also held at the EFI. The workshop was an expanded version of the ‘hacking the library’ session I ran for the State Library of Victoria’s Code Club in September last year. The aim of the workshop was first to give participants the confidence to poke around in websites – to play with urls, look under the hood to see how web pages are put together in the browser, and think about how they might be different. We then explored how you can change the way web pages look and work using bookmarklets and userscripts. The slides are fairly detailed, and you can probably try a number of the activities yourself if you’re interested. The bookmarklets and userscripts we experimented with all change aspects of the NLS website – such as inserting links or images. They’re all available in this GitHub repository and could be modified to work with other sites. The warm weather and jet lag meant I needed to be revived at various points by ice blocks (thanks Olga!), but it was a fun session, and by the end it was great to see people planning and building their own website hacks!

updates.timsherratt.org