Digitalisation meets microscopy: How we identify new butterfly species - Museum Evolution

At the museum, we search for unknown life - also unknown life that lives on earth! We are still discovering new species not only in the wild, but also in natural history collections. Cryptic species, for example, look the same from the outside, but are actually different species. Every newly discovered species helps us to better understand life on earth - and to protect it more precisely!
Théo Léger is the Scientific Head of our Lepidoptera and Trichoptera collections. These include butterflies, moths and caddisflies. Around 700 new species of butterflies are still discovered every year. At the museum, we are now using the synergies of digitization and microscopy to examine every little detail (more than just) closely. In the case of butterflies, this is mainly the abdomen!
A film team accompanies the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin on its way into the future. On CZcams you become part of our Museum Evolution!
The earth is changing. Every second. For 4.56 billion years. But this change is happening too fast lately! This is shown by the speed of species extinction and climate change.
We are making the museum fit for new challenges, also structurally. As a place where, in future, a million visitors a year will be able to engage in an exchange about the preservation of our natural foundations of life. And as a place where more than 200 scientists are already researching life and the earth. We are catapulting the 30 million objects in our collection into the future - analogue and digital. For all of us! So that we can work together on solutions - for nature and the cohesion of society.
In cooperation with Hans Otto Film
With music by Dominik Eulberg