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The scanner is in a College of Engineering building. Peering into the innards of animals is just one use of it.
UF’s Florida Museum of Natural History is home to a collaborative endeavor called iDigBio, which was awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to boost digitizing specimen collections.
A network of sites in the country with CT scanners are part of iDigBio. An estimated 1 billion species are in collections nationwide, and the goal is to digitize all of them.
Images are available to researchers, teachers and the public. The wizardry of some software can magnify details in the images, isolate anatomical parts for close inspection and perform other manipulations to learn more about the creatures.
FMNH scientists have identified previously unknown species of insects, marine invertebrates, moths and more.
They and their colleagues worldwide are in a rush to identify as many as they can as biodiversity is slipping away because of habitat loss, climate change and other factors.
“That’s basically my life’s work. All I do is try to document life on earth,” Gustav Paulay, museum invertebrate zoology curator. “It’s the single most-important thing I can do today as a scientist.”
Even as new species are being discovered, it may already be too late.
Florida Museum of Natural History discoveries
A blue-green lichen, cora timucua, was recently identified from among the museum’s collections, the museum reported.
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