Biodiversity Spotlight

Since October 2014, iDigBio has promoted biodiversity education by highlighting a different organism each month in our Newsletter in the Biodiversity Spotlight section. Each spotlight includes natural history information, current research, and links to relevant specimens in the iDigBio Portal. Each spotlight is created via collaboration among the iDigBio team, TCN members, other researchers, and nature photographers. View iDigBio's "Biodiversity Spotlight" archive below.

Biodiversity Spotlight: March 2022

Draba verna flowers
Draba verna flowering. Image taken from: https://awkwardbotany.com/2018/05/23/tiny-plants-draba-verna/

Every year around this time I think about Aldo Leopold’s ode to Draba, a tiny, inconspicuous plant that can serve as an early sign of spring in some areas for the extra observant. 

Biodiversity Spotlight: September 2021

 

Dead Leaf Butterfly! (Kallima inachus)

Contributed by: Lauren Bradley

Autumn is right around the corner, and what a beautiful season it is! Here in Florida, we see the occasional red or yellow leaf during the autumn months, but really, all we can hope for is some cooler weather, and even that isn’t guaranteed. The Kallima inachus seems to agree with us humans in admiring the beauty of autumn, as they have evolved to imitate dead leaves! (Thus giving them their common name, the dead leaf butterfly). 

October 2020 Biodiversity Spotlight

 

Contributed by Cat Chapman

Have you ever been out on a walk through nature, or even in your neighborhood, and saw what appeared to be a clump of tiny leaves, debris, or lichen… only to see it move?

Upon closer inspection of this mysteriously motile clump of detritus, you may see that it has tiny little legs underneath it. It’s alive!

Meet the trash bug!

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