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Accessible, digital natural history

From insect and plant specimens to slides of fossil samples and microscopic life forms, Europe has an unparalleled wealth of natural history resources. Maintained by museums and institutes, collections are now being made accessible both physically and digitally by an EU-funded project that is helping democratise research and preserve these treasure troves of taxonomic data.

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Innovation Research Infrastructures European Research infrastructures, incl. e-infrastructures Austria Belgium Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Hungary Netherlands Spain Sweden United Kingdom

date:  12/07/2016

Project:  Synthesis of systematic resources

acronym:  SYNTHESYS3

See also:  CORDIS

Building on the work of two previous initiatives, the SYNTHESYS3 project is providing a range of physical and digital services to researchers across Europe and beyond, offering enhanced access to more than 390m plant and animal specimens at 18 natural history institutions in 11 countries. As a result, SYNTHESYS3 is supporting scientists studying climate change, invasive species and food security as well as marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem functioning, among other key research fields.

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