Six living habitats · one hand-built enclosure
A living system, built by hand and close enough to watch.
miniBIOTA brings freshwater, terrestrial, and saltwater habitats into one room so the relationships that shape a landscape can be seen at human scale.
Enter the field recordThe complete six-chamber enclosure · studio view
A small world that makes relationships visible.
Six biomes across three realms house real organisms inside a system engineered largely from scratch.
The habitats connect in specific ways. They share atmosphere, humidity, and overhead light. Organisms and organic matter cross boundaries. Rain moves down the terrestrial slope through the Lakeshore into the Freshwater Lake. The saltwater side circulates separately and never mixes with the fresh.
Those are the kinds of links that hold a landscape together. This one is small enough to watch them work.
From the living system
Weekly miniBIOTA Update: June 11, 2026
A weekly field note from the miniBIOTA system: what changed, what was observed, and what we are watching next.
- 01 Cyanobacteria and mud crabs put the Seagrass Meadow on watch
- 02 Two shoreline snails joined the Marine Shore watch
- 03 True Mangrove Tree Crabs started using the edges
The system behind the habitats
Look closely at the machinery behind the weather.
Four vertical atmosphere processors were built to condense rising moisture against cooled surfaces and return it to the habitats as rain.
- 01
The stacked internal shelves give moist air repeated surfaces for condensation during active cooling.
- 02
During active cooling runs, condensate collecting on the chilled rear glass demonstrated the enclosure's closed rain cycle.
Watch it change
Each of miniBIOTA’s six biomes is photographed straight on every day, building a visual record that stretches back years.
Quiet signals from the enclosure
Weather across the six biomes.
Live temperature and humidity readings reveal the different microclimates taking shape across the monitored biomes.
Not currently monitored
27.1°C · 39.5% RH
28.4°C · 86.9% RH
27.5°C · 37.3% RH
27.1°C · 38.8% RH
Not currently monitored
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