Photographing a Passionflower While on a Snail Search - Observation of the Week, 7/8/22

Our Observation of the Week is this passionflower, (likely Passiflora cristalina), seen in Brazil by @flsantos!

“I grew up in a small town and had a lot of contact with nature,” says Fábio Luis dos Santos. After studying insects in college, he now works at the Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso (UNEMAT Alta Floresta campus) and at the Escola Estadual 19 de Maio, and tells me “Today my interests are moths and butterflies, as well as questions about basic education and college education.”

And it was while leading a gastropod-focused outing with students that Fábio found the flower you see photographed here.

As soon as we arrived at the trail, I asked the students to observe all the organisms in the place and the red flower that was in front of them. However, nobody took a picture.. As I guided the activity, I went back and forth along the trails and didn't have time to take a picture, but on the tenth attempt, while the activity was working perfectly, I finally managed to photograph the flower.

Interesting that being an urban area, I told them about other very nice records nearby...for example, this snail.

Passiflora cristalina was described just over eleven years ago, and not too much is known about it. There are only eleven observations of the species on iNat, and Fábio has made four of them. There are over 500 species in the genus, and they not only provide a lot of fodder for pollinators, their fruits and leaves are food sources for many other animals (including humans).

Fábio (above) has been an iNat user for nearly three years now, and credits it for helping his students during the COVID pandemic

as a way to encourage [them] to go out and observe nature without an agglomeration of people…And it's as fun as playing Pokemon Go (laughs).

It's been a way of discovering that even the most abundant, common species that inhabit our homes can still carry many questions that can only be answered with massive data sets.

It has also been a form of continuing education, considering that each record, when approaching a taxonomic category in the determinations, presents us with unique opportunities for learning.

(Photo of Fábio by Sabrina Raisa dos Santos. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)

- You can find Fábio and his work on ORCID.

- Passionflowers are kind of amazing, check out their diversity on iNat!

Speaking of snails, take a look a this recent paper that analyzed iNat snail observations in Brazil!

Posted on July 8, 2022 07:52 PM by