I'm in Burlington, Vermont for the 2026 Northeast Natural History Conference 2026. Say HI if you're also here!

Took a short walk through Centennial Woods this morning, walking distance from the hotel, as a tech rehearsal for this afternoon's field trip to Russell Farms.

#NENHC #NENHC2026 #Vermont #Burlington #Naturalists #Conference #Beeple

iTextilis

From the Archive: Ribbons, Bands and Cords – Observations by 18th Century Naturalists and Artists (3000 words). https://www.ikfoundation.org/itextilis/ribbons-bands-and-cords.html

#textiles #textilehistory #ribbons #naturalists #artists

Amanhã, 11 de Março, o projecto #KnowAfrica vai sair da universidade para ir até à Biblioteca Pública de Évora, onde Sara Albuquerque e Anderson Antunes vão apresentar uma palestra integrada no ciclo "Ciência na Biblioteca".

Começa às 17h, com entrada livre.

ℹ️ https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/events/knowafrica-bpe/

#Histodons #Colonialism #AfricanVoices #ScientificExpeditions #ColonialAfrica #HistoryOfScience #Naturalists #Colonialismo #HistóriaDaCiência #ExpediçõesCientíficas #SciComm

Slides from my talk last night to the Field #Naturalists Association of #Canberra:

"Lessons from #Malaise trapping in Aranda"

https://codeberg.org/dhobern/presentation/src/branch/main/Lessons_from_Malaise_trapping_in_Aranda.pdf

As with most of my talks, there are few notes, but the gallery of amazing #insects may mean something to some of you.

#entomology #taxonomy #DNAbarcoding #biodiversity #OnceAndFutureKing #Hymenoptera #Lepidoptera #Strepsiptera #Hemiptera #Collembola #Araneae #wasps #moths #springtails #spiders

I'm speaking today at the Field #Naturalists Association of #Canberra meeting (held in the Slatyer Seminar Room at #ANU at 19:30). Visitors are welcome.

I'll give an overview of some of the interesting insects collected in a #MalaiseTrap over a year in a Canberra suburb, including some of the things we can learn from the resulting specimens and #DNA. Many of the specimens were sequenced as part of the International Barcode of Life project (#IBOL). There will be plenty of photos of insects and other invertebrates.

The FNAC meeting each month starts an hour and a half after the monthly meeting of the Canberra #Python Users Group, also on the #ANU campus, so it's quite possible to attend both. The topic this month is a "Talk Writing Workshop".

https://fieldnatsact.com/event/march-monthly-meeting-speaker-donald-hobern-exploring-local-biodiversity-with-a-malaise-trap/

https://www.meetup.com/canberra-python-meetup-group/events/313087616/

#entomology #taxonomy #Australia #Hymenoptera #Lepidoptera #insects

Please consider becoming a member!

The #CoastalISC is a #nonprofit organization composed of local citizens, representatives from First Nations, governments, utilities, natural resource industries, academia and conservation groups, and others who share a common concern about the impacts of invasive alien plants in #CoastalBC. The Coastal ISC serves the geographic area of #VancouverIsland, the #GulfIslands, and the #SunshineCoast.

https://www.coastalisc.com/become-a-member

#Naturalists #NatureGuardians #BCInvasivePlants #conservation #stewardship #Environmentalists #EarthFirst #ProtectNativeSpecies #BritishColumbia #Canadian #Cascadia #PacificNorthwest #PNW

Why is #JavaScript so popular? I hate everything about it.

I'm speaking at the #Canberra Field #Naturalists meeting at #ANU next month on #Malaise trapping and the #insects and other #invertebrates that surround us without our noticing them.

I expect most of my slides to be arrays of four or six #microscope images with a header (probably a family name in most cases) and captions for each image.

I don't want to lay out all these images in #LibreOffice (or any similar presentation tool) because I'm a perfectionist and getting it all tidy will take forever.

So, I decided to try out #Slidev, #Marp and other #Markdown-based presentation tools. The Markdown part is very appealing, but they all lean hard into JavaScript. That would be fine so long as I don't have to think about that side of things.

Slidev's AppleBasic theme seemed to be the best starting point, so I started hacking it to add som extra gridded image views. Plain image grids were not too challenging, but I really want captions for each image, so I started trying to understand how the templates use the forest of underlying JS libraries and CSS artefacts to produce the displayed slides.

Frankly, the whole thing is so opaque and would take me much longer to understand than preparing multiple presentations by hand would.

Then I realised I can use #montage on the command line to produce the kind of layouts I want, and I can script #exiftool to extract and prepare the captions which will save time.

So, my new plan is to write a #Python script that processes a #YAML file listing all the slides, titles and image paths. It can generate PNG images that are close to the target 1920*1080 size (give or take a little). I'll then use LibreOffice for a couple of more text-oriented or irregular slides, export those and combine all the images into a PDF.

I'm sure this will be way faster than battling Node.js. Not sure why I felt I had to write it up.

https://fieldnatsact.com/

Help needed to photograph and record #JoshuaTrees!

Joshua Trees bloomed earlier than usual – and it spells trouble for iconic succulent

By Chris Nesi
Published Jan. 25, 2026, 10:13 p.m. ET

"Southern California’s famed Joshua trees are flowering months ahead of schedule, baffling scientists and raising fears about the future of the species.

"The #MojaveDesert succulents typically bloom between February and April, timing their flowers to the arrival of the #YuccaMoth — the only insect capable of pollinating them.

"The moth lays its eggs inside the flowers, producing fruit whose seeds are later spread by rodents.

"This year, however, the trees’ familiar white-and-yellow blooms began appearing on late October, sparking concerns that the early flowering could disrupt the delicate relationship between the trees and their sole pollinator — and threaten the species’ ability to reproduce."

[...]

"Yoder suspects this year’s early rains may have triggered the premature bloom. His Yoder Lab is now asking members of the public to help document the phenomenon by uploading photos of Joshua trees in bloom to #iNaturalist, allowing scientists to gather data on whether the early flowering affects fruit production.

" 'We’re looking for as many folks out there as possible to help observe this phenomenon,' Yoder said.

Read more:
https://nypost.com/2026/01/25/us-news/early-bloom-of-joshua-trees-could-spell-trouble-ahead/

#EarlyBloom #ClimateChange #CitizenScientists #JoshuaTreeFlowers #Naturalists

Wild and Wonderful : An ethnography of English naturalists by Vanessa Manceron,
2025

In Wild and Wonderful, social anthropologist Vanessa Manceron investigates an understudied but indispensable scientific practice: getting to know and recognize the living worlds around us.

#OpenAccess

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/104939

#books
#NaturalHistory
#naturalists