Welcome to The Natural History Museum repository

The Natural History Museum is an international leader in the study of the natural world. Our science describes the diversity of nature, promotes an understanding of its past, and supports the anticipation and management of the impact of human activity on the environment.

The Museum's repository provides free access to publications produced by more than 300 scientists working here. Researchers at the Museum study a diverse range of issues, including threats to Earth's biodiversity, the maintenance of delicate ecosystems, environmental pollution and disease. The accessible repository showcases this broad research output.

The repository was launched in 2016 with an initially modest number of journal publications in its database. It now includes book chapters and blogs from Museum scientists.

Select a community to browse its collections.

  • Pollinator-flower interactions in gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020

    Ollerton, Jeff; Trunschke, Judith; Havens, Kayri; Landaverde-González, Patricia; Keller, Alexander; Gilpin, Amy-Marie; Rodrigo Rech, André; Baronio, Gudryan J; Phillips, Benjamin J; Mackin, Chris; et al. (International Commission for Plant Pollinator Relations, 2022-07-27)
    During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plants in gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of various sizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norway to 37.96° South in Australia, resulting in a data set of 25,174 rows, with each row being a unique interaction record for that date/site/plant species, and comprising almost 47,000 visits to flowers, as well as records of flowers that were not visited by pollinators, for over 1,000 species and varieties belonging to more than 460 genera and 96 plant families. The more than 650 species of flower visitors belong to 12 orders of invertebrates and four of vertebrates. In this first publication from the project, we present a brief description of the data and make it freely available for any researchers to use in the future, the only restriction being that they cite this paper in the first instance. The data generated from these global surveys will provide scientific evidence to help us understand the role that private gardens (in urban, rural and suburban areas) can play in conserving insect pollinators and identify management actions to enhance their potential.
  • Subfossil cyclostome bryozoans from Daidokutsu submarine cave, Okinawa, Japan

    Taylor, Paul D; Di Martino, Emanuela; Rosso, Antonietta; Chiu, Ruby WT; Fujita, Kazuhiko; Kitamura, Akihisa; Yasuhara, Moriaki (Coquina Press, 2025-07)
    A sediment core (Core 19) taken in Daidokutsu cave on Ie Island, Okinawa, spans the last 7,000 years. The sampling of multiple taxa from this submarine cave has been aimed at understanding the Holocene history of biodiversity and ecological dynamics. The results have already been published for ostracods, molluscs, foraminifera and cheilostome bryozoans. The current study focuses on the cyclostome bryozoan fauna, establishing a taxonomic foundation that will contribute to an understanding of responses by the bryozoan comm