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BHL News, Blog Reel, User Stories

A New Snail Species Named in Honor of BHL!

A new land snail species from Laos has been named in honor of the Biodiversity Heritage Library! Vargapupa biheli, a medium-sized, slender turriform species with a well developed basal keel, was described in the article “Revision of the Genus Pseudopomatias and its Relatives (Gastropoda: Cyclophoroidea: Pupinidae” in Zootaxa: 3937(1), 2015, by Barna Páll-Gergely, Zoltán Fehér, András Hunyadi, and Takahiro Asami.

April 16, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

No Flippant Matter: The Re-Invention of the Flipper and Why Ceatacean Flippers Are Unique

Cetaceans are not closely related to other aquatic vertebrates and represent a unique lineage derived from hoofed land mammals that returned to an aquatic lifestyle about 50 million years ago (Thewissen, 1998). The transition from land to water, i.e. the development from weight-bearing forelimb with five hoofed toes to tissue-encased flipper not capable to support locomotion on land, is well documented by fossils (Thewissen et al., 2001, 2009) and very different from other aquatic vertebrates. Consequently many morphological characteristics that cannot be detected in fossils have remained little documented or speculative.

April 9, 2015byMoyna K. Müller

Blog Reel, User Stories

Just a Click Away: BHL Promotes Biodiversity Research and Taxonomy

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is dedicated to providing open access to the biodiversity resources in its collection. Open access not only ensures that users the world over can freely locate the information they need online, but it also enables other biodiversity initiatives to make use of the wealth of knowledge represented in our 45 million+ pages to support research and taxonomy.

February 19, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

Finding Agriculture among Biodiversity: Metadata in Practice

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is committed to providing free and open access to over 500 years of natural history literature from across the globe. Towards that goal, the Library currently contains over 45 million pages of biodiversity content, representing over 155,000 volumes and 90,000 titles. However, hosting the content online is just part of our vision to “inspire discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.” Users must be able to identify content relevant to their work and interest from amongst this vast corpus.

January 20, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

Original Publications at our Fingertips

Systematics is the branch of biology concerned with classification and nomenclature. It is sometimes used synonymously with taxonomy. In their 1970 publication Systematics in Support of Biological Research, Michener et al. defined systematic biology and taxonomy as: Identifying species, their relationships and evolutionary hierarchies, is critical to saving biodiversity.

January 13, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

Using the Salamander Brain to Understand Human Behavior

What can a salamander brain tell us about human behavior? A lot more than you might think, discovered Lou Morgan, an independent researcher who has been studying the physiological underpinnings of human behavior for 30 years. While Morgan’s undergraduate education focused on mathematics, a history of familial psychological problems fueled an interest in understanding the underlying mechanisms of human psychology. In the 1950s, Morgan began taking the first of many college psychology courses. These courses, however, focused largely on human thought and behavior subsequent to their manifestation.

December 11, 2014byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

Rejuvenating Centuries’ Old Botany with Phytogeography

Here’s a word of the day for you: Phytogeography. Phytogeography is a branch of biogeography that investigates the geographic distribution of plants and the effect that the earth’s surface has on that distribution. To go further down the rabbit hole, biogeography studies the distribution of species and organisms now and throughout time.

November 13, 2014byGrace Costantino