RSS 1.0Welcome to The Natural History Museum repository
The Natural History Museum is an international leader in the study of the natural world. Our science describes the diversity of nature, promotes an understanding of its past, and supports the anticipation and management of the impact of human activity on the environment.
The Museum's repository provides free access to publications produced by more than 300 scientists working here. Researchers at the Museum study a diverse range of issues, including threats to Earth's biodiversity, the maintenance of delicate ecosystems, environmental pollution and disease. The accessible repository showcases this broad research output.
The repository was launched in 2016 with an initially modest number of journal publications in its database. It will expand significantly in the future through the addition of more journal articles, book chapters, blogs and multimedia items from Museum scientists
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New species of Apostolepis (Serpentes, Dipsadinae, Elapomorphini) from Bolivia, from the Apostolepis borellii group(Research & Reviews, 2017-02-28)Description of a new species of Apostolepis based on three specimens labelled A. borellii from Bolivia in The Museum of Natural History of London. The new species belongs to the borellii Group which is at present only represented by the species A. borellii. This new species differs from A borelii by the following characters: (a) snout with median stripe (vs. immaculate); (b) supralabial blotch long (vs. short); (c) stripes evident on brown background (vs. having a blackish brown background with almost indistinct stripes) (d) ratio subcaudal by ventral scales low (vs. high) (e) lower sides cream (vs. darkish and dotted). The species area is Mato Grosso Plateau neighbouring the highlands of Bolivia in Cerrado Domain. The species is similar to A. striata and A. serrana from which it differs mainly by having nucho-cervical collars which is absent in the latter species. These species are placed in a specialized group (borellii group) while the phillipsae group is represented by A. phillipsae.
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UniEuk : Time to Speak a Common Language in Protistology!(Wiley, 2017-03-24)Universal taxonomic frameworks have been critical tools to structure the fields of botany, zoology, mycology, and bacteriology as well as their large research communities. Animals, plants, and fungi have relatively solid, stable morpho‐taxonomies built over the last three centuries, while bacteria have been classified for the last three decades under a coherent molecular taxonomic framework. By contrast, no such common language exists for microbial eukaryotes, even though environmental ‘‐omics’ surveys suggest that protists make up most of the organismal and genetic complexity of our planet's ecosystems! With the current deluge of eukaryotic meta‐omics data, we urgently need to build up a universal eukaryotic taxonomy bridging the protist ‐omics age to the fragile, centuries‐old body of classical knowledge that has effectively linked protist taxa to morphological, physiological, and ecological information. UniEuk is an open, inclusive, community‐based and expert‐driven international initiative to build a flexible, adaptive universal taxonomic framework for eukaryotes. It unites three complementary modules, EukRef, EukBank, and EukMap, which use phylogenetic markers, environmental metabarcoding surveys, and expert knowledge to inform the taxonomic framework. The UniEuk taxonomy is directly implemented in the European Nucleotide Archive at EMBL‐EBI, ensuring its broad use and long‐term preservation as a reference taxonomy for eukaryotes.
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SEM-microphotogrammetry, a new take on an old method for generating high-resolution 3D models from SEM images(Wiley, 2017-03-22)The method we present here uses a scanning electron microscope programmed via macros to automatically capture dozens of images at suitable angles to generate accurate, detailed three‐dimensional (3D) surface models with micron‐scale resolution. We demonstrate that it is possible to use these Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images in conjunction with commercially available software originally developed for photogrammetry reconstructions from Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras and to reconstruct 3D models of the specimen. These 3D models can then be exported as polygon meshes and eventually 3D printed. This technique offers the potential to obtain data suitable to reconstruct very tiny features (e.g. diatoms, butterfly scales and mineral fabrics) at nanometre resolution. Ultimately, we foresee this as being a useful tool for better understanding spatial relationships at very high resolution. However, our motivation is also to use it to produce 3D models to be used in public outreach events and exhibitions, especially for the blind or partially sighted.
