Summary
Last month, a team of ichthyologists sponsored by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History performed the first survey of the fish diversity in the Cuyuni River of Guyana. Upon their return, they needed to identify the more than 5,000 specimens they had collected in less than a week’s time in order to obtain an export permit. Faced with insufficient time and inadequate library resources to tackle the problem on their own, they instead posted a catalog of specimen images to Facebook and turned to their network of colleagues for help.
Description
The increased internet access across South America and the massive recent growth of social networks has made tapping the world’s collective knowledge easier than ever. Based on this experience, Facebook offers a remarkably efficient free tool that can accelerate taxonomic identification substantially.
Facebook's ichthyological foray has proved that how a technology could be roped in for a collective purpose - specifically for science or generally for Nature !
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Posted by Tim Satterthwaite
Facebook's ichthyological foray has proved that how a technology could be roped in for a collective purpose - specifically for science or generally for Nature !