Environmental Studies Program

Biodiversity at Brandeis

Since 2016, the campus community has been engaged in documenting biodiversity (the variety of life) on campus via the online science platform iNaturalist.

Learning how to keep track of the natural world and identify species are invaluable skills for any environmental professional. iNaturalist helps us to curate what is known about our campus and the species with whom we share our 235-acre campus home.

INaturalist is easy to use and allows our students to engage with a network of people who openly share their knowledge of and passion for nature. It also serves as a crowdsourced species-identification tool and organism-occurrence documenting tool that helps students to discover what the natural world on campus looks like and how it may change over time.

One need not be a Brandeis student or enrolled in an environmental studies course to use iNaturalist. Anyone can join the iNaturalist community and follow the results of our work. To date, we have documented more than 1,000 species!

Biodiversity on the Brandeis Campus

a patch of low-growing plants with green, stalked leaves and a single white flower

Wood Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

low-lying patch of spiked green moss with greenish-yellow bulbs

Aloe-Mosses (Family Polytrichaceae)

yellow-spotted black bee perched on a purple plant

European Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum)

winged insect with black and dark green body sitting on a leaf

Pale-veined Emerald-Bottle (Bellardia vulgaris)

brownish-gray barred owl perched in flowering tree

Barred Owl (Strix varia)

dark brown bald eagle with white head perched in tree

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

pale gray butterfly with orange spots perched on a flowering plant

Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus)

plant clustered with orange and yellow flowers amid a patch of grass

Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)