Newsfeed
Naturalists Help the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist Build Biodiversity Big Data in 2020
January 27, 2021From the first observation of 2020, a Gray Fox still celebrating the New Year at 4:30 AM submitted by ckhunt, to Great Mullein leaves poking out of the snow shared by Pete Kerby-Miller at twilight on the last day of the year, naturalists added nearly 175,000 biodiversity records to our rapidly growing database of life in Vermont.
Craig Provost: A Vermont Birding Quest for the Ages
January 4, 2021This past June, he achieved a birding milestone that precious few Vermont birders will ever realize, as he became just the second person in history to document 150 species in all of Vermont’s 14 counties, each within a single calendar year!
New look at movements and distribution patterns of 807 bird species across the globe
December 16, 2020The mesmerizing visualizations brought to you by the eBird Science team with the help of more than 9,000 Vermont eBirders and over 300,000 eBirders around the world offer a bird’s-eye view of avian movements. One could easily get lost in watching warblers and flycatchers migrate across continents—it’s an experience like no other.
Big Biodiversity Data Now at Your Fingertips
December 14, 2020The Vermont Center for Ecostudies launched an ambitious online project that allows anyone at a computer to explore vast amounts of data on biodiversity across the Green Mountain State. Now released as a beta version, the Vermont Atlas of Life Data Explorer is the newest implementation of the Living Atlas platform, powerful software first developed in Australia and now being implemented by countries around the globe.
New Ant-Mimic Spider Sneaks Into Vermont
December 5, 2020A small, metallic-black arthropod with a head, thorax, abdomen, and two waving antennae – your classic picnic-robbing ant right? Take a closer look at Michael Sundue’s photos at the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist and you’ll see that in fact this is the first record of the ant-mimicking spider Myrmarachne formicaria in Vermont.
Tall Beech Fern (Phegopteris excelsior): Newly discovered fern species in Vermont
November 25, 2020Tall Beech Fern (Phegopteris excelsior) was recently described as a new species. Tall Beech Fern was originally thought to be a hybrid of Long Beech Fern (P. connectilis) and Broad Beech Fern (P. hexagonoptera). Further analysis proved that Tall Beech Fern is of hybrid descent, but not from a hybridization event between Long and Broad Beech Ferns. Given the number of differences between Tall Beech Fern and the species it is most closely related to—Long Beech Fern—Tall Beech Fern was described as a new species.
Lunchtime Learning
October 16, 2020Join Community Science Outreach Naturalist Julia Pupko every Wednesday at noon for an hour of iNaturalist, Vermont eBird, and eButterfly help, with some Vermont natural history topics on the side!
Pruinose Squash Bee Mission Update
September 30, 2020Earlier this year, we called on our Citizen Scientists to find as many Pruinose Squash Bees as possible. Find out the results of this mini-mission!
Mission: Find and Share Observations of Squash Bees from Your Garden
August 6, 2020The Eastern Squash Bee is an important pollinator of cultivated crops of squash, pumpkins, and related plants. Only reported in five counties so far, we need your help in recording the range of this species in Vermont. Just watch some squash flowers in your garden with camera in hand!
Help Us Find August Bees!
July 30, 2020While July might have been the best month for bee diversity, August brings the best chance for rare species that can be identified from photos. In addition to the many fall specialists, there are numerous kleptoparasitic species active right now.
Join the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz
July 27, 2020Join thousands of volunteers in Canada, Mexico and the United States, from July 24 to August 2, 2020 for the 4th annual International Monarch Monitoring Blitz. With limited ability to do field work due to COVID-19 restrictions, researchers need your observations now more than ever.
It’s Not Just You, There Actually Are A Lot More Chipmunks Out There
July 15, 2020If you’ve been spending any time hiking this summer, walking through the woods or even just driving along Vermont roads, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking: Are there chipmunks, like, everywhere this year? We turn to a small mammal biologist for answers. It’s been a good year for chipmunks in the northeastern U.S. A really good year.
