Content Highlights - May Bug (Melolontha melolontha)

Did you know that the May Bug is related to Scarabaeus, the sacred beetle of the ancient Egypt? Or that the beetle is used in gastronomy?

Once an abundant beetle in temperate Europe, Northern Asia and continental USA, the May Bug is nowadays quite a rare visitor to our gardens. However, after pesticide controls were implemented in last decades, its numbers have started to grow again.

Melolontha melolontha from EoL - image is under CC BY-NC.

The May Bug is 20 - 30 mm long beetle belonging to family Scarabaeidae. Female beetles lay 15-30 eggs three times during late spring. The larvae hatch after 4-6 weeks. They live in the soil feeding on roots of grasses and cereals and might be serious pests.

Melolontha solitaria from Europeana - image is under CC BY-ND of National Museum, Prague.

The larvae live for about 3-4 years. Pupate adult beetles stay hidden underground hibernating over winter and then fly out collectively. This corresponds to the development of the larvae and thus, adult beetles appear every 3-4 years in large numbers. This happens usually in April or May, which is where the name "May Bug" came from. The adult beetles feed on leaves and flowers of deciduous trees, plants and shrubs but do not tend to be serious pests. They are most likely to be seen in the evenings, often crashing into windows after being atracted by artifical light of human buildings. The beetle produces an alarming loud buzzing noise as it flies, but it is harmless to humans.

The genus Melolontha is also known to palaeontologists as it has been found fosilised. Pictured is a specimen of the Miocene age from the collection of the National Museum, Prague.

Content Highlights - House Mouse (Mus musculus)

Meet the house mouse, a mammal that is not only a pest but also a model organism. Did you know that male mice can produce ultrasound whistles, by which they react to female pheromones?

Mus musculus from EoL, image is under CC BY-SA.

Mice are small rodents, active primarily at night. They have very sensitive hearing, sense of smell and sight. They eat almost everything they come across, food scraps, various insects, grain and even soap. Mice are found in nature as well as human dwellings, and move often. Besides the damage to food stocks, mice are unpleasant in that they leave their urine and droppings everywhere. They are also dangerous carriers of disease and parasites.

Listen mice sounds at Europeana, these items are under CC BY-NC-ND of Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.

Mice build nests under floors or in attics, and line them with paper, rags, leaves and similar materials. They breed very quickly; females can have up to twelve young, five to ten times per year. Gestation is approximately 20 days. The young are ready to leave the nest in another 20 days, and become sexually mature within their first year. In captivity they can live up to four years. They have many natural predators, like carnivores, snakes and birds.

Mus musculus from BHL.

Meet more animals which live in human dwellings at Biodiversity Library Exhibition topic called "Nature at your home". Stay tuned!

New Biodiversity Library Exhibition topic – Nature at your home

Today, we would like to introduce a new BLE topic called „Nature at your home“, which will give you an insight on what organisms may be found living near or directly inside your house.

Nature at your home

„Nature at your home“ presents more than 20 different species of plants or animals, that have learnt to exploit the benefits of living close to human settlements. You can find them in your garden, as well as directly within your house or flat, sometimes being much closer than you have ever thought. Our new topic, however, also shows that these organisms are also fascinating creatures of the nature. Have you, for example, known that Oriental Cockroach (Blatta orientalis) is able to survive several weeks without its head until it starves to death? Or that the Human Flea (Pulex irritans) posseses the most complex reproductive organs among the animals? If not, then all you need to do is to go through our new topic at the BLE website!

All of the information, pictures and paintings in „Nature at you home“ are linked to their original sources at BHL, EoL or Europeana. Stay tuned!

Second OpenUp! Annual Meeting 2013 Prague

In April of 2013, the OpenUp! project successfully concluded its second year, and for that occasion, we organized the 2nd Annual meeting in Prague.

The meeting was held at the National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic from Wednesday, April 24th through Friday, April 26th. For the main venue, we chose the New Building of the National Museum, which previously housed Radio Free Europe, before that, the communist parliament, and was built in the early 20th century as a stock exchange. More than fifty participants from Europe and the USA gathered to participate in the meeting.

Group photo

The first day of the conference started with the Steering Committee meeting, where administrative tasks were addressed and resolved. In the afternoon, two parallel sessions were conducted - Technology Management Group meeting followed by Content Providers meeting, and Outreach and Dissemination Group meeting. The first day was concluded by an excellent dinner featuring Czech cuisine at the spectacular Pantheon hall in the Historical building of the National Museum.

Katja Schulz is presenting EoL

The Project Assembly meeting took place on the second day, bringing interesting overviews of project progress and presentations by several invited speakers. We particularly thank four special guests who were asked to address the conference: Katja Schulz (Encyclopedia of Life, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC), who presented past, present and future visions of the Encyclopedia of Life; Geer Oskam (Europeana) introducing aims, efforts and impact of open data provided by Europeana; William Ulate Rodrigues (Biodiversity Heritage Library, Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis MO) who spoke on behalf of the Global Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) US/UK and BHL-Europe; and Vishwas Chavan (GBIF Secretariat, Copenhagen), who expressed his views on the changing paradigm in biodiversity data publishing.

Jiří Frank is presenting BLE

After the presentations were over, the OpenUp! Tutorial and Outreach workshop took place being moderated by Jiří Frank (National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic) and Boris Jacob (MRAC, Belgium). During the event, the possibilities and benefits of becoming a content provider were stressed. Important information on providing content to Europeana through OpenUp! was presented, and the role of the Helpdesk was highlighted. Later in the afternoon, a short meeting of the ODG took place again, mainly discussing a new outreach strategy and usage of different dissemination approaches.

On the final day of the conference, the Review meeting by EU Evaluation Panel & Steering Committee took place. The reviewers had no major points of criticism and only a few recommendations, which we will implement during the project's final year.

Presentations given during the conference, as well as abstracts, more photos and other information concerning the event will soon be available at our project website, stay tuned!

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The 4th OpenUp! Newsletter

We are glad to inform you that the new OpenUp! newsletter has recently been published at our new project website. You can read the last newsletter issue under this link. The 4th newsletter issue is full of interesting articles concerning different domains and topics.

If you are interested in becoming one of the OpenUp! partners or in what the benefits of membership are, you need to see the article of "A quick guide for becoming an associated partner of the  OpenUp!". We have also published several interesting news from our related projects, such as Europeana, BHL, BHL-Europe and Europeana creative. For the technically-skilled audience, articles on the new BioCASe version release and the implementation of common names web-services for the OpenUp! Content could be useful.

As we mentioned at the begining, the OpenUp! project has launched a new project website. The website´s description is also included in the new newsletter. For those who are interested in nature at your surroundings, we have prepared news on a new BLE topic of “Nature at your home”, which will be published at the beginning of next week.

Traditionally, we point out to our progress in social media and interesting conferences and events and one of them is presented directly by one of our content providers, Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands.

Thus, all you need now is to visit our website and go through our latest newsletter issue. Stay tuned!

Content Highlights – Death cap (Amanita phalloides)

The death cap is one of the most poisonous mushrooms in the northern hemisphere. However, did you know that food prepared with a death cap is extremely tasty?

Amanita phalloides; this image is under CC-BY-NC-SA of Danish Mycological Society in Europeana

The death cap is medium sized mushroom, with cap 7-15 cm in diameter. It grows throughout the entire temperate zone of Europe, Asia and North Africa. It was carried (probably with tree seedlings) to North America and Australia. This mushroom grows from summer through fall in deciduous or mixed forests. The death cap is responsible for most mushroom poisonings, and even small doses can be very dangerous. Resistance to the poison varies among individuals, so specifying a fatal dose is difficult. The poison - amanitin, damages the liver and kidneys.

Amanita phalloides by František Šaržík from EOL

Initial symptoms occur 8 to 48 hours after ingestion. In this phase, the person experiences fatigue, stomach nausea, dizziness, headaches and feelings of cold, even freezing. The nausea intensifies, stomach aches occur, accompanied by strong retching and watery diarrhea, leading to dehydration, and eventual circulatory failure. This is usually the immediate cause of death in children. If the patient survives this phase, his condition appears to improve (usually the fourth day after ingestion). In the second phase, the kidneys fail, and sometimes the liver as well. Death usually occurs four to twelve days after ingestion. Treatment of death cap poisoning involving infusions with a high concentration of thioacetic acid was invented by the Czech doctor J. Herink.

Amantia from BHL

You can find more about death cap on BLE – Poisonous nature. Stay tuned to us!

Content Highlights - Deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna)

Look at one of the most poisonous plants in Europe - deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna). Did you know that in the early and middle ages, women of all ages rubbed belladonna juice into their eyes to make them large and beautiful, from which also comes the species name of the plant (bella donna = beautiful woman)?

Atropa belladonna from Europeana (image is under CC-BY-SA, from Biologiezentrum der Oberoesterreichen Landesmuseen)

Deadly nightshade is massive 50-180 cm tall shrub with dark purple bell-shaped flowers. The pods are shiny black berries the size of a cherry. Nightshade grows in well-lit forests all over Europe, diminishing northwards. This plant belongs to the Solenaceae family, as do the potato and tomato. All parts of the plant are poisonous, and contain tropane alkaloids.

Oepn Up! content of Atropa belladonna on Europeana

Nightshade's principal danger lies in that its berries are very pretty and look edible, have a pleasantly sweet taste, and are at eye level for children, to whom they look like overripe cherries. Two to four berries are a fatal dose for a child, an adult needs ten to twenty. The most poisonous part of the plant is the root, but the consumption of even a single leaf can be fatal for an adult. Symptoms are initially a red face, dry mouth, dilated pupils and quickened pulse; in later stages, heart arrhythmia, tremors, hallucinations, paranoia and cramping.

Atropa belladonna from BHL

This plant is widely used in medicine. Nightshade is an ingredient in atropine drops, used in ophthalmology, because atropine dilates the pupils. Extract from nightshade leaves is also used in analgesics to counteract cramps of smooth muscle tissue (antispasmodic). For more information see BLE Poisonous Nature. Stay tuned!