Collectors of biodiversity specimens may find weird specimens more often than we realize, yet they lack standardized ways of reporting these outliers. Outliers may provide key clues about how life on Earth is changing, for example, how species are responding to pollution, anthropogenic disturbance, climate change, and invasive species. The Outlier Detection and Documentation by Collectors (ODD Collectors) Working Group with iDigBio is currently working to develop standards, training, and cyberinfrastructure to enable biodiversity collectors to make these outliers known. With the new hashtag, #ODDSpecimen, we hope to raise awareness of the presence of outliers in biodiversity specimen collections, which may indicate the beginnings of transformative biotic change. Our inaugural tweet (below) was just recently issued on April 6th.
We invite all to share their own outliers, especially on #WeirdSpecimenWednesdays, either by recommending an outlier to iDigBio or by tweeting @iDigBio and #ODDSpecimen.
Those interested in joining the ODD Collectors Working Group or learning more about our work are encouraged to contact Katelin Stanley (kstanley@bio.fsu.edu) or Austin Mast (amast@bio.fsu.edu).
