Category Archives: It’s All About the Plants

Many arms (and legs) make light work!

Crowdsourcing the digitisation of invertebrate collections at the South Australian Museum

It’s All About the Plants
Tuesday, 5 May 2015, 10:00–12:00
Goodman Building Lecture Theatre,
adjacent to the State Herbarium of South Australia
Adelaide Botanic Garden, Hackney Road

by Alexis Tindall
South Australian Museum

Photo: Alexis Tindall

New technologies have the potential to make museum and herbaria collections useful in new ways, and expose them to new audiences, but making our collections digital is a huge challenge for these organisations.

The South Australian Museum has, like many museums around the world, turned to online volunteers as one way to speed the digitisation of our collections. Alexis Tindall, Project Manager, will share her experience using the DigiVol crowdsourcing portal to digitise the museum’s marine and terrestrial invertebrate collections. She’ll talk about the benefits and opportunities of crowdsourcing, as well as the challenges they encountered along the way.

Alexis Tindall joined the South Australian Museum in late 2010 to establish a volunteer program to digitise terrestrial invertebrate types for delivery online through the Atlas of Living Australia. Volunteers in that program create thousands of high resolution digital photographs and database records to make these taxonomically significant specimens more discoverable and accessible. Since then the digitisation project has expanded to provide images on demand to inquiring researchers for analysis and publication, exploring crowdsourcing as a method of rapid digitisation, and the development of digital products such as the Field Guide to the Fauna of South Australia app.

All Herbarium staff, honoraries, volunteers, students and guests welcome.
Morning tea provided.

Plant DNA barcoding in the genomics era

It’s All About the Plants
Tuesday, 14 April 2015, 10:00–12:00
Goodman Building Lecture Theatre,
adjacent to the State Herbarium of South Australia
Adelaide Botanic Garden, Hackney Road

by Ed Biffin
State Herbarium of South Australia

Barcoding DNADNA sequences have long been used to identify biological specimens. The DNA Barcoding initiative has sought to standardise this process through the development of one or a few short regions of DNA that can be routinely obtained from all living species and can distinguish among them. The ‘official’ plant DNA barcode, comprising two DNA fragments from the chloroplast genome, has several favourable qualities but also has limitations. With the recent development of new sequencing technologies, the availability of genome scale data has dramatically increased. Ed will talk about these developments, and how new sources of data may be used to improve the plant DNA barcoding solution.

All Herbarium staff, honoraries, volunteers, students and guests welcome.
Morning tea provided.

State Herbarium seminars in 2015

The dates for this year’s It’s All About the Plants seminar series have now been fixed. The talks will again take place in the Botanic Garden’s Goodman Building Lecture Theatre (Hackney Road, Adelaide) on the first Tuesday of every month from 10:00–12:00, except July, August and December. In August, the State Herbarium of South Australia plans a mini-symposium to celebrate its 60th anniversary.

The following speakers have agreed to give talks in 2015:

  • 14 Apr. — Ed Biffin (State Herbarium)
  • 5 May — Alexis Tindale (South Australian Museum)
  • June (TBC) — Teresa Lebel (National Herbarium of Victoria)
  • 8 Sep. — Jose Facelli (The University of Adelaide)
  • Nov (TBC) — Doug Fotheringham (State Herbarium, our newest Hon. Research Associate)

Hope to see you all.

Ruppia translocation in the Coorong

It’s All About the Plants
Tuesday, 3 March 2015, 10:00–12:00
Lecture Theatre, Goodman Building

by Katherine Ryan
Senior Project Officer, CLLMM Recovery Project

Come and hear how an excavator can be used for positive outcomes in large- scale aquatic plant restoration.

The aquatic plant, Ruppia tuberosa is a key primary producer in the Coorong, providing food (foliage, turions, seeds) for waterbirds, and habitat for fish and invertebrates. During the millennium drought, the population of R. tuberosa in the Coorong was severely depleted, including its seed bank. Therefore when improved water conditions returned, the plant was not able to respond quickly without intervention. Continue reading