What is Nature Navigator?

First, some facts:

• there are over 60,000 different kinds of animals, plants and fungi to be found in the British Isles
• each kind may be known by many different names
• there are many websites dealing with British wildlife - the problem is finding one which contains the information that you are looking for.

How Nature Navigator can help you

Nature Navigator provides a single access point to information on more than 8,000 of the best-known species that occur in Britain. It will guide you through the mass of names of organisms, showing you the preferred scientific and common names, related organisms and where they fit into the classification of the natural world. At its heart is the Navigator - a powerful, yet easy to use interactive display that allows you to explore relationships between organisms. For each name you will see a fact sheet that also provides links to related resources on the Web. If you have Java installed, you can use a dynamic version of the Navigator where you can expand and contract branches in a 'family tree'-like classification scheme.

What Nature Navigator is not!

• it is not a complete listing of every species in Britain - we have only included species that have a common name. The Species Dictionary Project is working towards a complete record of British wildlife
• it is not a wildlife encyclopaedia - we wanted to include as many names as possible and we have not been able to write about each one. Instead we provide links to quality resources where you can find further information
• it is not an identification guide - this will take a lot of work! We know that it would be useful and we may be able to provide this in the future.

Why are there no photographs?

Nature Navigator has been funded by the New Opportunities Fund Digitise Programme, which has enabled us to digitise over 6,000 original paintings and illustrations held in the libraries of the Natural History Museum. These can be viewed on the Gallery page. They have been selected to represent the work of some of the foremost British wildlife and botanical artists.

These images also appear on the pages for individual species. Since one of our aims is to make our collections of artworks accessible, we have not as yet included any photographs - and unfortunately, we don't have an illustration for every species!

And there is more to come!

We are continuing to expand Nature Navigator all the time. Over the next year you will find more names, more links to other sites and more extensive facts. We shall be involving users too - asking you to contribute local names and your own photographs so that, together, we can build a fantastic resource for British wildlife information.

Credits and acknowledgements

Nature Navigator has been made possible through a grant from the New Opportunities Fund, the main distributor of National Lottery good causes money, through the New Opportunities Fund Digitise Programme.

The site uses open-source software called Touchgraph developed by Alex Shapiro

The following Natural History Museum staff have been involved in the creation of this site:

Original concept: Ray Lester
Project management: Charles Hussey
Content development: Malcolm Grant, Douglas Russell
Programming: Dilshat Hewzulla, Charles Hussey
Design: John Benfield, Eleanor Fisher, Melissa Shaw
Final design and website build: Lisa Walley, Mike Lowndes
Image digitisation: Helen Cowdy
Artwork conservation: Kate Edmondson
Scientific advice: Anne Baker, Peter Barnard, Sheila Halsey, Paul Hillyard, Miranda Lowe, Alexander Muir, Douglas Russell, Clare Valentine, Kathie Way.
Additional contributions from: Malcolm Beasley, Bob Bloomfield, Rebecca Chetley, Ann Datta, Julie Harvey, Penny Hamilton, Martin Lawrence, Mike Lowndes, Jane Mainwaring, Tobin May, Vicky Paterson, Chris Sleep, Liz Woznicki.

We would also like to thank:

Fenella Richmond of Nature Publishing Group Reference for allowing us to link to articles published in Nature Encyclopedia of Life Sciences.

Ralph Lucas of the Good Schools Guide and Donald MacLeod of the Independent Schools Directory for help with promoting Nature Navigator.