Turkey - iNaturalist World Tour
We're in Turkey for the 55th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. Here, the top two observers, @trcarlisle and @a_emmerson have observations centered along the southwest coast of Turkey. A cluster of top observers such as @sabi and @mark027 have observations centered near the coastal Lake Köyceğiz in the province of Muğla. There is a cluster of top observers such as @selini and @theturkologist with observations centered near the most populous city of Istanbul. Another cluster of observers is clustered near the capital of Ankara (e.g. @bsener and @nermin). @ieakinci's observations are centered near the city of Kahramanmaraş and @merav's to the west of Istanbul.
The number of observations per month in Turkey ramped up in 2018 and again in 2019.
@sammyboy2059 is the top identifier overall and for birds and mammals. @kastani, the second top identifier, leads in plants and arachnids. @ozgebalkiz leads in insects. Thanks to all the other top identifiers such as @sabi, @odtudedoga, and @tubacan.
What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist in Turkey? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread
@trcarlisle @a_emmerson @sabi @selini @merav @ieakinci @sammyboy2059 @kastani @odtudedoga @tubacan
We’ll be back tomorrow in Sri Lanka!
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My observations are only from a wildlife holiday I recently spent there, unfortunately I don't know anyone in Turkey :-( I am still working on narrowing down the butterflies and plants I saw down to species level where possible, any help is always appreciated :-) I have been the first to post observations for some of the blue butterflies - so looking forward to more observations to help there as information on butterflies and plants in that part of the world seems quite sparse!
I moved to Turkey at the beginning of 2018 after spending the previous decade mostly in the United Arab Emirates. In Turkey. In March of 2019 I moved to Bodrum on the Aegean coast, after spending a year further east in the Mediterranean region, in Tarsus. I am slowly exploring the local fauna and flora of wherever I happen to be, and trying to make sense of it. Many thanks to all the identifiers who have helped me in that endeavor. This is a fascinating region with an insane amount of biodiversity and not nearly enough documentation. The local scientific community does its best with limited resources. Inevitably it's an uphill battle to garner public interest in and funding for ecological research and conservation efforts in a country whose entrenched government has banned any mention of evolution from the national school curriculum. I'm hoping that iNaturalist observers and identifiers can make a difference and help turn the tide.
We just need more time I guess. In the meantime if you post invitations to the Turkish groups like Flora https://m.facebook.com/groups/106515485317?multi_permalinks=10156407763500318¬if_t=group_highlights¬if_id=1566060680191449&ref=m_notif
or doğal hayat https://m.facebook.com/DogalHayat/
it might help.
I visited Turkey in May with Odonata as my main goal. Opportunistic records along with visits to sites I looked up before I went. Will visit again in future for Birds, Butterflies and Odonata. Mark
There's a https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flowering-plants-of-turkey collection project as part of the Naturemap endeavour to improve flowering plants info for four countries with high diversity. We are particularly seeking help with identifications at the moment - both high level sorting into plant families, and then also we are liaising with botanic gardens to invite botanists in with more specialist expertise.
Thanks to everyone who has been observing and identifying in Turkey so far!
I forgot to mention the NatureMap project, thanks @lera - here's the link to that recent MongaBay article on the project.
@selini it looks like http://dogalhayat.org/ is a similar site to iNat? It doesn't seem appropriate for us to push iNat on their Facebook group, but if you know anyone involved in that effort and think they might be interested in collaborating that would be cool. It also looks like the Flora group is associated with https://www.turkiyebitkileri.com/en/. I wonder if they'd find any value in running having an iNat collection project for plants of turkey one thing it would give them that their FB group isn't is stats on number of species etc. do you know any of the organizers there?
@loarie not personaly. but you can send a dm to them and find out their reaction. the moderator’s name of flora is Riyat Gul and he speaks english. I don’t know about the doğal hayat.
We had a similar thought of getting in touch with Flora for Naturemap - https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/26828-reaching-out-through-facebook-translation
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