How Natural History Museum Digitisation Supports New Science

The Natural History Museum in London holds 80 million specimens — and 80 million stories. For decades, these stories lived behind the scenes, accessible only to researchers. Now, they’re being unlocked one pixel at a time.

“Globally, natural history collections hold some 1.1 billion objects,” said Jennifer Pullar, Science Communications Manager at the Natural History Museum. “But only 16% are digitised and discoverable for study by anyone, anywhere in the world.” That small slice is already transforming what scientists know about biodiversity, pandemics, and even the food on our plates. Imagine the possibilities if the rest were unlocked.

When a Beetle Surprises Science

Digitization is often thought of as a clerical task: photographing, cataloguing, and uploading records. But sometimes, the process produces fresh discoveries. Pullar recounted one such moment when her team digitised their six-millionth specimen: Calosoma sycophanta, a jewel-toned beetle that preys on invasive caterpillars.

“As our digitizer, Louise, was imaging the specimen, she noticed scales around the mouth of the beetle,” Pullar explained. “Curators had previously just put this down to dirt. Further investigation confirmed these were scales from an adult moth.”

This was new knowledge. Until then, no one had recorded the species feeding on adult moths. In Pullar’s words: “Digitization not only catalogues and shares data with the world—it contributes new scientific knowledge.”

Speeding Up Science

Digitization at the NHM isn’t a one-size-fits-all job. A pinned insect requires a different workflow than a pressed plant or a fossilized bone. The museum has invented systems like ALICE (Angled Label Image Capture and Extraction), which uses six cameras to photograph a specimen and its labels simultaneously.

“With ALICE we can get through 500 insects a day,” Pullar said. “Our top recorded is 1,365 in a single day.” For herbarium sheets, the team manages up to 1,000 a day. And when moving vast parts of the collection to a new centre, they’ve devised rapid techniques like scanning 100 drawers or 80 jars per person per day.

The scale is staggering, but the payoff is even greater. Since 2015, NHM’s digital collections have been downloaded 56 billion times, contributing to more than 4,800 scientific papers. These studies influence everything from climate change policy to drug discovery.

Crops, Bats, and Bees: Digitization in Action

The practical uses of this work stretch far beyond the museum walls. Pullar offers a glimpse into three projects:

• Wheat resilience: By digitising 8,000 specimens of wheat and its relatives, some dating back 300 years, researchers can now identify lost genetic diversity. Up to 1,400 of these specimens are being sequenced to search for traits that could make future crops resistant to disease, saltwater flooding, or extreme heat.
• Pandemic origins: During COVID-19, NHM collaborated with institutions worldwide to digitise bat specimens. “Greater understanding of species distribution and ecosystem change from specimen data can help predict when a future viral spillover might happen,” Pullar said. Bats, after all, are natural reservoirs of coronaviruses.
• Bumblebee stress: By analysing digitised bee wings from across UK institutions, scientists discovered that hotter, wetter years correlate with greater wing asymmetry—a physical marker of stress. “With the climate crisis unfolding,” Pullar explained, “the results suggest that bumblebees will be under more stress in the future.”

From Specimens to Social Media

Pullar, as a communicator, sees storytelling as essential to digitization’s impact. “As far as I’m concerned, we have 80 million specimens, so we have at least 80 million stories,” she said. Her team has turned digitisation finds into Instagram posts, media campaigns, and even inspired jewellery collections.

One of her favourite examples? A drawer of gynandromorph butterflies, half male and half female. “They’re a perfect example of natural diversity of sex in nature,” she said.

These stories don’t just reach the public; they capture government attention, fuel funding bids, and cement digitization’s role in shaping the museum’s future.

The Next Level: DiSSCo UK

The next chapter is ambitious: a £155 million, decade-long national project called DiSSCo UK, launching in 2026. It aims to digitise 140 million specimens across British institutions, with regional hubs, centralised infrastructure, and automated workflows.

“DiSSCo UK will drive innovation in the use of collections data,” Pullar said. “Personally, I’m most excited about being able to work with more of you and your collections—and finding out your cool stories.”

Saving the Planet, One Pixel at a Time

The story of digitization is more than a tale of efficiency. It’s about scale—scaling up research, scaling up collaboration, scaling up the impact of collections once confined to drawers. As Pullar puts it, “Releasing this data enables more access, new science to happen, and helps us plan a future in which people and our planet can thrive.”

What began as an experiment with six cameras and a pinned insect is quickly becoming a global movement. And the Natural History Museum’s decade of digitization might just be the start of a destiny that reaches far beyond its walls.

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Jennifer Pullar, Science Communications Manager at the Natural History Museum spoke at the Digital Collections Summit 2025.