"Map of Life" Shows the Location of All Organisms, Large and Small

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - 16:10 in Mathematics & Economics

Mapping Little Brown Bats The Map of Life platform lets you search by species, using either its Latin name or common name, and find out where it is located on the planet. The project sheds light on how little we know about some species. Map of Life Project Ever wonder exactly where grizzly bears live on this continent? Or where you might find Myotis lucifungus, the fuzzy, adorable little brown bat that is currently threatened with extinction because of white-nose syndrome? Now you can track them on Google Maps, thanks to a new program that aims to plot the location of every single living thing on Earth. It's kind of like the Gawker Stalker, only with lemurs instead of Malcolm Gladwell. This ambitious project, called the Map of Life, uses a Google Maps platform to map the known distribution of 30,000 species of terrestrial vertebrates. Many more are still being added, with...

Read the whole article on PopSci

More from PopSci

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net