A few quick updates on Belly Button Biodiversity and related projects:
- Azeen Ghorayhshi recently wrote a short bit for Wired Magazine UK recently about Belly Button Biodiversity.
- You can now download and take a gander at the second and final batch of data from Belly Button Biodiversity. The available file contains both taxonomic information (OTU tables) and meta-data self-reported from our last batch of participants. These are the same data we used to generate the interactive pie chart.
- In late October, over 50 folks stopped by the NC Museum of Natural Sciences to participate in artist Joana Ricou’s Bellybutton Portrait Series. Joana has recently launched a tmblr site to share these portraits virtually before they go on display at the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.
Artist Joana Ricou shows Museum visitor how to sample her belly button for microbes.
- On November 5, over 100 enthusiastic volunteers attending the SciCafe at the American Museum of Natural History sampled the skin microbes in their belly buttons. We’ll use these swabs to study the composition of those microbes, the odors they produce, and how they influence our relative attractiveness to mosquitoes – Stay tuned!
- Mark your calendars! Life on Us, the 2-part documentary series about the microorganisms living on us and in us (featuring Rob Dunn, face mites, belly button microbes and the Your Wild Life team in action at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences), makes its US broadcast debut on the National Geographic Channel on December 19, 2014. Don’t miss it!
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