LifeScanner

Use LifeScanner to explore species anywhere across the world. This app allows you to educate and share with your friends and followers through social media the species you have found around you. When you use the LifeScanner kit in conjunction with the app, you transmit your sample's collection data to the scientists in the lab, allowing this data to become part of scientific research in the future. The biodiversity of this planet is comprised of all the living organisms on it. We see this biodiversity as an intertwined network of species that form the ecosystems and food webs we depend on. All the food we eat and the animals we interact with have a role in this web of life we call biodiversity. After 250 years of research in cataloging the species on the planet, we are nowhere near recording them all. Scientists have estimated that nearly 80% of the species on the planet have yet to be discovered. Many live in remote locations but most hide in plain sight, too small and uncharismatic to be noticed or too similar in physical appearance to other species to be discovered.

We can't protect what we do not know - it is estimated that a third of the species on the planet will go extinct by the end of the current century. To solve this problem, DNA is being used to catalog each species. DNA can be used to get the identity of any species, much like a fingerprint.

Using our sampling kit you can submit any whole insects, plant leaves, or uncooked meat. The kit contains everything you need to submit your sample for identification and contribution to the scientific database. Each kit comes with 4 vials for any organism you find. A kit will be delivered within a week of order. You put the organisms in the kit and send them back to us. Each sample kit has been carefully designed by our scientific team to enable us to extract and sequence the DNA within each sample. Once we've sequenced your sample, we'll send the results directly to your iPhone so that you can visualize and understand the data.

Help us catalog the organisms around us.