May 2013
2 posts
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EOL/Google Earth Monarch Butterfly Tour Now...
Every year eastern monarch butterflies begin a journey north from their overwintering grounds in Mexican forests. The epic migration spans generations and the better part of a continent.
EOL is pleased to announce a new Google Earth tour video showcasing the migration of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in North America, and the people that help them out along the way.
This Google Earth...
April 2013
9 posts
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Climbing Perch - Anabas testudineus (Bloch)
Climbing Perch - Anabas testudineus (Bloch)
Anabas testudineus, a small fish from Indian waters, testudineus means “turtle like”(1) commonly called as climbing perch .This is a fish widely distributed throughout south and south east Asia. It is a very common fish found in the river and pond waters of Machilipatnam and Eluru of Andhra Pradesh. It is a Bengali delicacy and is frequently exported...
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Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) :: xeno-canto →
xeno-canto.org
Common Cuckoo · Cuculus canorus · Linnaeus, 1758 Order: CUCULIFORMES Family: Cuculidae (Cuckoos) Genus: Cuculus Species: canorus Map Legend Subspecies bakeri · Hartert, 1912 • canorus · Linnaeus, 1758 • fal …
Enjoy some bird sounds - specifically, an awful lot of them. EOL is delighted that xeno-canto is one of its content partners; we’re also big, big fans of...
EOL Monday Update
With the coming of spring here in DC the streets are full of spring-breakers enjoying the sights - and today, even a bit of warm weather for a change. The famous Cherry Blossoms are expected to “peak” between from April 3 to April 6, so if you’re planning on stopping by, it’s time to make plans.
At EOL we’ve got a number of projects early in their blooming season,...
March 2013
3 posts
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How to contribute sounds to EOL via SoundCloud
Interested in sharing your nature recordings with EOL?
Here are 5 Easy Steps on how to setup your SoundCloud recordings so they can be shared with the Encyclopedia of Life at eol.org
Step 1: Provide the taxon name either as a tag or pasted in the description section of your audio record.
Example: “taxonomy:binomial=Anarhichas lupus”
(the quotes are needed to help SoundCloud...
February 2013
1 post
Inside EOL: Call for Marketing Intern
I’m interested in bringing a marketing intern into EOL to help us with some exciting new projects. If you know of anyone who could join us at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History for a few months this year, let me know by sending an email to bcorrigan at eol dot org.
July 2012
1 post
New Content from The Freshwater and Marine Image...
We are delighted to welcome our newest content partner, The Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, presented by the University of Washington Libraries. The more than 21,000 images were taken from a variety of publications issued between 1735 and 1924. The scholarly can find the full reference from which an image originated on the object page under Source information. See the full collection on EOL.
June 2012
1 post
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Celebrate World Oceans Day
Happy World Oceans Day from EOL!
Celebrate oceans today by getting to know EOL collaborators around the world working on diverse marine research projects -
Students from the Marine Biodiversity and Conservation SEA semester program will be sharing data collected during their voyage with EOL via several of our marine content partners. Follow their progress via blog posts from the high...
May 2012
7 posts
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EOL Computable Data Challenge Deadline Extended to...
Good news everyone: the EOL Computable Data Challenge deadline for entries has been extended to Thursday, May 31, 2012. We invite ideas for scientific research projects that use Encyclopedia of Life http://www.eol.org, including the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL, http://biodiversitylibrary.org), to answer questions in biology. EOL and BHL have assembled text and multimedia about more than a...
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News: Biodiversity art show opening at Chicago's...
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, May 21, 2012 - “Nature’s Toolbox: Biodiversity, Art, and Invention,” a new traveling contemporary art exhibition, opens at Chicago’s Field Museum May 22. Harnessing technology and inspired by nature’s amazing design concepts, the show’s innovative, eye-capturing art helps visitors understand and appreciate the life-or-death interdependence between the 10-20 million species on...
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New One Species at a Time Podacst: Tulips
When you think of the tools of the modern geneticist, the lowly razor blade probably doesn’t come to mind. But this low-tech tool is essential to the work of Dutch geneticist (and passionate gardener) Ben Zonneveld. He users razor blands (and other tools) to unlock the genetic secrets of the flower whose spectacular genetic variation caused “tulip mania” in the 1600s - secrets that continue to...
News: EOL empowers curators to set preferred...
This morning, we released an exciting new tool on EOL that lets full curators set the preferred classification for a given EOL taxon page. This new feature was motivated by a number of challenges we faced bringing together data from so any different sources:
1) Sources differ on which name to use for a given organism
2) Some systems of classifying organisms are generally recognized as more...
Encyclopedia of Life reaches historic "one million...
Washington, DC - May 9, 2012 - The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) has surged past one million pages of content with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new images and specimen data from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).
Read the full release on EOL.org.
Anolis marcanoi Now Live On The Encyclopedia of... →
A marvelous article by Martha Muñoz describing her work to document an entire clade of anoles on EOL. Now I just need to convince her to write an article or two for the Anolis page!
April 2012
5 posts
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New on EOL: Isopods!
Did you ever think that all isopods look the same? Then check this out! The isopod research community is just getting started putting these online, and there are thousands of species of isopods at sea, on land, and in fresh water. Stay tuned as more of these crustaceans are posted to EOL from all over the world.
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EOL Review in Choice Reviews Online →
My pull quote:
“EOLv2 is a wonderful, free, and convenient resource for researching everything about organisms. Additionally, it is an excellent teaching tool. Summing Up: Highly recommended.” — T. S. H. Chan, SUNY Oswego
About Choice:
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries is the premier source for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources...
EOL and Environmental Education Week
The Encyclopedia of Life is being featured as part of National Geographic’s Schoolyard BioBlitz toolkit for Environmental Education Week, April 15-21, 2012. Participants can use EOL to learn more about biodiversity or try one of our backyard or school yard BioBlitz activities.
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Biodiversity Synthesis Center's Newsletter - Issue... →
The Biodiversity Synthesis Center’s Newsletter brings you reports and updates on past and future synthesis meetings, research and outreach projects from BioSynC and postings from the Encyclopedia of Life.
Based at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, The Biodiversity Synthesis Group is dedicated to advancing biodiversity science through diverse meetings, workshops, research...
March 2012
7 posts
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Deployment update for March 29, 2012
Good morning, friends! The EOL dev team deployed a fresh version of EOL in the last hour featuring fixes for a wide variety of “bugs” of varying severity and annoyance. We’re also putting the finishing touches on an important new feature for EOL - a notification system - as well as a variety of other interesting refinements. Stay tuned for more.
Fixes
[WEB-3490] - Collections...
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Notice: EOL consolidating GitHub accounts
Dear EOL developers:
The EOL Development Team will be making a change in the coming days which will consolidate our separate github accounts into a single account.
Previously our main EOL organization existed at http://github.com/EncyclopediaOfLife, however we are renaming this to replace the old http://github.com/eol.
You may find that after the change you will need to update your cloned...
Hard at work on the EOL Phylogenetic Tree...
Got a tree you can dust off, perhaps combine with other trees, and convert to Darwin Core Archive format?
Want to be the one to provide high quality evolutionary navigation to the Encyclopedia of Life?
Want a free trip to Ottawa, Canada?
Then you need to be part of the EOL Phylogenetic Tree Challenge. Submissions are due 15 April so there is less than one month to go!
If you are thinking...
Visit the High Line in New York City
Did you know there is a “park in the sky” in the heart of Manhattan?
Welcome to the High Line.
The High Line is a public park built on an historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. It is owned by the City of New York, and maintained and operated by Friends of the High Line. Founded in 1999 by community residents, Friends of the High Line fought...
Check out EOL on Pinterest
I’m becoming a big fan of Pinterest, and not just because folks are sharing EOL photos there. Have a look and request a login today to begin sharing EOL photos with your friends.
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Broad-nosed Weevils on EOL
We are please to announce the availability of newly-published content from our collaborators at the University of Puerto Rico. These specimen images of Broad-nosed weevils - the Entiminae - come to us courtesy of research technician and photographer Jennifer Girón Duque.
A collection of this work is available here.
(Editor’s note - I invite an EOL contributor to provide a brief summary of...
February 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Using Google Refine and EOL to clean messy data
Google Refine is an elegant tool for data cleaning. One of its most powerful features is the ability to call “Reconciliation Services” to help clean data, for example by matching names to external identifiers. Google Refine comes with the ability to use Freebase reconciliation services, but you can also add external services. Inspired by this I’ve started to implement services...
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EOL Announces Open Access Support Project with...
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and Pensoft Publishers are pleased to announce a new collaboration that will increase the flow of new species descriptions from scientists in developing countries into the Encyclopedia of Life and promote the open access publishing model in taxonomy.
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Recap: EOL Global Content Summit on Barro Colorado...
Last month EOL held an exciting meeting hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. We gathered together content experts from most of EOL’s global partners — those organizations which have joined us in our mission to provide global access to knowledge about life on earth.
National projects like Naturalis and Atlas of Living Australia were...
January 2012
10 posts
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Welcome: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
EOL welcomes our newest content partner, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh!
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) was founded in the 17th century as a physic garden. Now it extends over four Gardens boasting a rich living collection of plants, and is a world-renowned centre for plant science and education. (link)
We are delighted they have chosen to share some of their holdings with the...
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Biodiversity on the Move - An Article by Ari...
Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Ari Daniel Shapiro from Atlantic Public Media (APM), a non-profit public media organization in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. APM was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to showcase how Atlantic Public Media has weaved Google Earth and KML tours into...
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Now Available: January 2012 EOL Newsletter
Learn about recent EOL news, announcements and activities in the January 2012 EOL newsletter.
To subscribe to the EOL Newsletter, check the box in your EOL Profile on eol.org or visit our newsletter signup page on Facebook.
Muse.ly: The Fair FoWL →
Source: Ely Wallis
Things have moved on after the last post where several of us listed some weird, wonderful and way-out animals and plants that we think don’t get the attention they deserve.
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New EOL Podcast: "Sanibel Shells"
In this episode of One Species at a Time, we join serious beachcombers along the high-tide line of Sanibel Island, Florida, USA. These “shellers” come in search of beautiful sea shells, sometimes no bigger than a grain of rice, that are the remains of marine snails, bivalves, and other mollusks. Along the beach and at the island’s Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum, we learn why Sanibel’s shores...
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Announcement: New EOL Species Collections by...
source: Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director, Pensoft Publishers
As a next step in its fruitful collaboration with EOL, Pensoft has created two species collections on EOL – Fabulous ZooKeys New Species and Fabulous PhytoKeys New Species. The main aim of this initiative is to bring together and promulgate the scientifically notable new taxa described every year in Pensoft’s journals and...
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Press Release: EOL Expanding at a Record Pace
Increase in Content Partnerships, Growing Spanish-Language Text, Conservation Content, and Images Boost Encyclopedia of Life’s Value to Scientists and General Public
Washington, D.C. – January 4, 2012 – The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) continues to expand at a record pace with the addition of new content and partners. At the start of 2012, EOL provides data on nearly half of all described...
December 2011
1 post
EOL Page Counts Explained
If you’ve been watching the EOL homepage closely over the last few weeks, you’ve probably wondered why the number of EOL “pages” went down from 750,000 to around 700,000 before suddenly going up to near 920,000. I’d like to give you some insight into what this number means and how it is calculated.
EOL has a lot of names (taxa) in it - well over 2 million of them. ...
