A team of researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is digitizing images of pollen from more than 18,000 plant species from the tropics. These images are being used to train a machine-learning model to identify pollen grains, a job that usually takes hundreds of hours of microscopy work by pollen experts. The images also will make a wide range of new pollen analyses possible. The database, called PollenGEO, will be free online. Pollen’s value in paleontology derives from its durability—with some pollen grains lasting hundreds of millions of years, offering a window into Earth history that is precise in both time and space. Also, each plant species’ pollen is unique and distinct from other species. https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp3.70073 https://stri.si.edu/story/digital-pollen Modern times! I spent a summer, long ago, in southern Illinois...gazing through a microscope at the lovely, myriad forms of pollen. Much of my course work involved ID-ing same. Can attest to the "time-consuming" element of this activity! But worth every minute. Nature creates beauty of form in even its tiniest sculptures. Fascinating!
