Black Box safari

Black Box Safari provides a window onto the microscopic world of the Arboretum – a glimpse into the incredibly diverse, beautiful, and engaging organisms which are crucial for the existence of all other life on earth.

The name ‘Black Box’ relates not only to the magnifying glass-topped boxes which offer a portal into this ‘new’ world (videos of microbes found at various sites around the Arboretum), but also to the fact that so little is known about the diversity of form and function of these microbes.

Therefore they are an ecological ‘black box’: we know their activities are very important in all habitats globally, but don’t know most of the biological details or processes involved in those activities. Such questions are central to my scientific research.

We plan to develop the Black Box Safari for future installations around the country, so comments and opinions from those who experienced our first outing at Art in the Arboretum are very welcome, either on this site or to me directly at the Natural History Museum: d.bass@nhm.ac.uk