Florida Museum Fossils Go to Space
UF researcher Rob Ferl carried 56-million-year-old primate and horse jawbones, plus a Pleistocene moon snail shell from the Florida Museum of Natural History, on a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
Florida Museum Curator Helps Team Score 1st-Place and $5 Million in International Biodiversity Competition
UF researcher Robert Guralnick, curator of bioinformatics at the Florida Museum of Natural History, is a member of an international team that won first place in the five-year XPRIZE Rainforest competition.
UF researchers use AI, lasers to pioneer precision spraying to combat mosquitoes
UF Researchers from the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory (FMEL) and the Florida Museum of Natural History are working to revolutionize mosquito control by using artificial intelligence to improve its precision.
New $12.5 Million National Science Foundation Grant Awarded to Study Phenomenon Affecting Agriculture, Cancer, Biodiversity and More
UF has 7 of 18 scientists who have received a combined $12.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the Polyploidy Integration and Innovation Institute. The grant is part of a broader initiative by the National Science Foundation to bring together scientists from disparate areas of expertise to work on pressing problems in biology.
Computing Power Is the Key to Analyzing a Changing Environment
Robert Guralnick, the biodiversity informatics curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, says data science approaches, particularly machine learning, can help with the critical challenge of extracting the best data generated by an ever-more-closely monitored environment and using it to save global biodiversity.
A Team of UF Researchers Find a Unique Connection Between Humans and the Bahamian Hutia
Meet the Bahamian hutia. A species of rodent that can reach the size of a full-grown rabbit, they just might hold the key to helping us understand the behavior and lifestyles of indigenous humans in the Bahamas. In a study published in PLOS One, a group of researchers from the University of Florida shares their […]
Robert Guralnick Named UF Research Foundation Professor
The University of Florida Research Foundation has named Florida Museum of Natural History scientist Robert Guralnick a UFRF Professor for 2020-2023. In his role as the Florida Museum’s curator of biodiversity informatics, Guralnick uses an understanding of evolutionary processes to help create a roadmap for the future of life on Earth. By digitizing natural history […]
Museums Preserve Clues That Can Help Scientists Predict and Analyze Future Pandemics
Florida Museum of Natural History curator and distinguished professor Pamela Soltis, Ph.D., explains in The Conversation how she, along with colleagues from across the U.S. and in six other countries, identified a largely untapped resource for predicting future pandemics: natural history collections in museums around the world. These collections preserve specimens of animals, plants and […]
Catnip’s Chemical Attractant Is New Twist on Old Family Tradition
Catnip is most famous for its ability to launch felines into a euphoric frenzy, but the origin of its cat-attracting chemical is a remarkable example of evolutionary innovation. While the compound nepetalactone drives two-thirds of cats batty, likely by mimicking sex pheromones, its real purpose is protecting catnip from pests. Nepetalactone belongs to a class […]
Stuck at Home? Your Nature Observations Can Help Scientists (and Maybe Your Mood)
If you’re suddenly noticing the wildlife outside your window while sheltering in place — or if you’re trapped far away from nature and craving it — there’s a way to turn quarantine observations into data that can power scientific research. Becoming part of a community of citizen scientists might just soothe your sense of isolation, too, […]