Pollen under the microscope

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Birds, bees and other animals visiting flowers for food are helping plants reproduce by spreading pollen around. Discover how beautiful pollen looks up close and why it's important to study pollen and pollinators. Check out an amazing new microscope owned by CSIRO and the Atlas of Living Australia that helps palynologists (pollen scientists) automatically identify pollen to speed up biodiversity research and discover new species. The 'Classifynder' microscope, developed and built by Massey University in New Zealand, is the world's first automated pollen microscope. It's one of a growing number of imaging systems for taxonomists and researchers built by specialists in image analysis, pattern recognition, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

For more information see:
Classifynder website - http://www.classifynder.com
Australasian Pollen and Spore Atlas - http://apsa.anu.edu.au
Atlas of Living Australia - http://www.ala.org.au
CSIRO Biotech Imaging - http://www.csiro.au/science/BiotechImaging.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• CSIRO
• Massey University
• ANU
• Australian National University
• Atlas of Living Australia
• pollen
• transformational biology
• bioinformatics
• conservation
• pollinators
• flowering
• automated identification
• imaging system
• botany
• biological specimens
• biodiversity
• ecosystems
• morphology
• phenomics
• microscope