Technically, this is five resources in one place. The list, compiled by Michael Roston, contains links to the Encyclopedia of Life with information about every named species on Earth. If you’re into taxonomy, you can explore up and down the tree of life to see how species relate. As a special treat for natural history data geeks, there’s a link to the London Natural History Museum’s data portal (still in beta). Want to know what a tasmanian devil sounds like in the wild? You can download (under a Creative Commons License) scientific recordings from around the world, or browse the 3.5 million specimens they’ve already put on line.

There are also links to iDigBio, a project supported by the National Science Foundation, that aims to digitize natural history collections from museums and universities across the United States, as well as a link to the Atlas of Living Australia, which is the perfect way to spend that five minutes sitting on hold before the conference call starts. (Or, true confession, to browse during and after the conference call, too.)