Puerto Rico - iNaturalist Tour Mundial

We're in Puerto Rico for the 54th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour! The top observer is @blueinferno with activity centered near the capital of San Juan where there seems to be the highest concentration of local users including @iveirizarry, @ritirene, @ricardocolonrivera and @mqzed. The next two top observers, @keishacharlene and @lvilla2962 are most active along the western tip of Puerto Rico near the University of Puerto Rico Aguadilla Campus. Both are involved @prsofia's Proyecto Playuela. Many of the top observers are visitors, mostly from the mainland United States including @drbh2o @rangertreaty50 @jbroadhead @mjplagens @billicbugslucas @annikaml and @botanygirl with activity centered in various clusters around island. A group of observers including @kent\_miller and @fatroosterfarm have observations centered on the small island of Culebra to the east.

¡Estamos en Puerto Rico para la 54ª parada del iNaturalist Tour Mundial! El principal observador es @blueinferno con actividad centrada cerca de la capital de San Juan, donde parece haber la mayor concentración de usuarios locales, incluidos @iveirizarry, @ritirene, @ricardocolonrivera y @mqzed. Los siguientes dos observadores principales, @keishacharlene y @lvilla2962 son más activos a lo largo del extremo occidental de Puerto Rico, cerca del campus de Aguadilla de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Ambos están involucrados en el Proyecto Playuela de @prsofia. Muchos de los principales observadores son visitantes, principalmente de los Estados Unidos continentales, incluidos @drbh2o @rangertreaty50 @jbroadhead @mjplagens @billicbugslucas @annikaml y @botanygirl con actividades centradas en varios grupos alrededor de la isla. Un grupo de observadores, incluidos @kent\_miller y @fatroosterfarm, tienen observaciones centradas en la pequeña isla de Culebra, al este.

The number of observations per month in Puerto Rica is quite jagged with peaks higher than 250 observations per month stretching back to 2014. This indicates that this is mainly due to activity from visitors. But there seems to be more organic, sustained growth since 2018. Many of the local top observers such as @keishacharlene, @lvilla2962, and @ritirene have affiliations with the University of Puerto Rico, I'd be curious to know how iNaturalist is integrated, if at all, into the University and if thats driving this recent growth. Likewise, top observer @iveirizarry's academic affiliations are with Rutgers and their observations coincide with the Spring 2019 Rutger's Personal Bioblitz organized by Rutgers professor @vilseskog.

El número de observaciones por mes en Puerto Rica es bastante irregular con picos superiores a 250 observaciones por mes que se remontan a 2014. Esto indica que esto se debe principalmente a la actividad de los visitantes. Pero parece haber un crecimiento más orgánico y sostenido desde 2018. Muchos de los principales observadores locales como @keishacharlene, @lvilla2962 y @ritirene tienen afiliaciones con la Universidad de Puerto Rico, me gustaría saber cómo se integra iNaturalist, en todo caso, a la Universidad y si eso está impulsando este crecimiento reciente. Del mismo modo, las afiliaciones académicas del observador superior @iveirizarry están con Rutgers y sus observaciones coinciden con la Primavera 2019 Rutger's Personal Bioblitz organizado por el profesor de Rutgers @vilseskog.

The top identifier overall and top insect, herp, and arachnid identifier is @ritirene who recently finished her PhD at the University of Puerto Rico. @joshuagsmith, based in Colorado, is the second top identifier and top bird identifier. The mysterious @greenline is the third top identifier and the top plant identifier. There are alot of beaches in Puerto Rico and thus a relatively high proportion of crustacean, bivalve, and fish observations with identifications in these categories led by myself (@loarie), @susanhewitt, and @maractwin respectively. Many thanks to other top identifiers such as @jbroadhead and @john8.

El identificador superior en general y el identificador superior de insectos, herpes y arácnidos es @ritirene, quien recientemente terminó su doctorado en la Universidad de Puerto Rico. @joshuagsmith, con sede en Colorado, es el segundo identificador superior e identificador superior de aves. El misterioso @greenline es el tercer identificador superior y el identificador superior de la planta. Hay muchas playas en Puerto Rico y, por lo tanto, una proporción relativamente alta de observaciones de crustáceos, bivalvos y peces con identificaciones en estas categorías lideradas por mí (@loarie), @susanhewitt y @maractwin respectivamente. Muchas gracias a otros identificadores principales como @jbroadhead y @john8.

What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist in Puerto Rico? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

¿Qué podemos hacer para que más personas usen iNaturalist en Puerto Rico? Comparta sus pensamientos a continuación o en este hilo del foro

@blueinferno @keishacharlene @lvilla2962 @drbh2o @rangertreaty50 @ritirene @joshuagsmith @greenline @jbroadhead @john8

We’ll be back tomorrow in nearby Turkey!

¡Volveremos mañana en Turquía!

We're in Honduras for the 53rd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour - and apologies for the delay posting this, we were tied up celebrating 25 million observations today. The top observer is @oliverkomar, a professor at Zamorano University which is located not far from the capital of Tegucigalpa (other top observers like @danielnavarro1 are also based near here). @denilsonoz's observations are clustered in the region around Lake Yojoa which is a large lake between the cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. @anniebeez and @tomdriscoll's observations are also clustered here. @ericvandenberghe's Honduran observations are scattered throughout the country but there's a large concentration on the island of Utila off the north coast of the country. @neild's observations are also clustered on this island. @hermes is a botanist with observations centered in western Honduras in the region around Celaque National Park. @djm has observations clustered in several regions around the country. @alexanderr's observations are clustered in the mountains to the west of San Pedro Sula. Don't miss this Zombie Ant Fungus observation seen by @jonathan\_kolby in Cusuco National Park near here that we featured in an Observation of the Week post.

The number of observations per month in Honduras has been ramping up since 2018. Its unclear what accounts for the peak in October, 2018 - or maybe this can be interpreted as a dip during the Christmas season? @oliverkomar's outreach to students through projects like Jardín Botánico de la EAP Zamorano have surely contributed to this growth.

The mysterious @norman-espinoza is the top identifier overall from Honduras (and the top identifier of birds). Top observer @oliverkomar is the second top identifier and leads in 5 of the categories (insects, plants, reptiles, arachnids, and fungi). @maractwin is the top fish identifier and has contributed many identifications to observations made by scuba divers around the Honduran islands. Many thanks to top idenfifiers @derick327 and @denilsonoz for contributing their local expertise, and thanks to all the other top identifiers from Honduras!

Relative to Mexico to the north and Costa Rica to the south, Honduras and its immediate neighbors often look like 'dark spots' on maps of biodiversity occurrence records. This makes observations from this relatively poorly studied country all the more important. What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist and generating biodiversity records in Honduras? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@oliverkomar @denilsonoz @ericvandenberghe @hermes @djm @anniebeez @danielnavarro1 @norman-espinoza @derick327 @maractwin

We’ll be back tomorrow in nearby Puerto Rico!

Today we've reached 25 million verifiable observations! Here's a time lapse video that shows when and where these observations were created going all the way back to launch in 2008. You can follow along with the total observation count as it grows.

At the end of 2018, when we reached 15 million observations, we wrote a blog post where we visualized what these observations would look like if each dot represented 100,000 observations. We've updated those figures below. We now have 250 dots: each row represents 1 million observations and each little block represents 5 million. The unfilled dots represent the 100 new dots since the last analysis.

iNaturalist observations now represent over 230,000 distinct species! That's 40,000 more than last time which, for perspective, is approximately the combined number of all bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species. We now have nearly 10 million plant observations and 6 million insect observations. We've passed 1 million fungi observations since our last analysis.

iNaturalist continues to have a strong North American bias, but we now have 2.5 million observations from Europe, nearly 1.5 million observations from Asia, and over 1 million observations added to Oceania, Africa and South America since our last analysis.

We ended up adding just shy of 8 million observations in 2018. As of today we've added nearly 10 million observations in 2019 and are on track to add another 6 million or so by the end of the year.

The core stats we show on the explore page are the number of observations, the number of species that these observations represent, the number of observers, and the number of identifiers. The graphs below show how these 4 stats have increased over time.

It is noteworthy that the number of species has also continued to increase rapidly. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) recently wrote a blog post about citizen science contributions to the GBIF archive. Their analysis shows that while there are other citizen science efforts that are generating more observations for a group of taxa (e.g. eBird for birds) or for a particular place (e.g. Artportalen for Sweden), iNaturalist stands out as the only global citizen science contributor that is generating observations of hundreds of thousands of species.

We're accumulating new species more and more rapidly - currently around 5,000 new species a month. But this growing rate is driven by the growth of new observations. It's actually getting harder to observe new species. Currently, about 1 in 400 observations represents a new species, but this rate is dropping over time. It will be interesting to see how iNaturalist continues to accumulate new species as they get rarer and rarer!

These 25 million records have a broad reach. iNaturalist data via GBIF has been cited over 340 times, which is just a fraction of the over 2,000 times iNaturalist is mentioned or cited in publications.

Thanks to every single person who helped us reach this 25 million milestone! And thanks to everyone who has donated to help us continue to improve the platform.

We're in Namibia for the 52nd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour where we've arrived from nearby Botswana. The top observer here is @alexdreyer based out of the arid Maltahöhe district of Namibia south of Windhoek. The locations of people on the map below (which represents the centroid of their observations within a bounding box around Namibia) is a bit misleading here since people covered so much ground. For example, @martin\_weigand activity is centered west of Windhoek but his observations are actually distributed up and down the Western half of Namibia. @peter\_erb and @wolfachim's observations are in a grand arc from the Caprivi, through Etosha National Park and south to Windhoek. @jurga\_li's observations range from Etosha National Park in the north down to the southern tip of the country. You can get a sense for what Etosha has to offer from this Observation of the Week post featuring a waterhole sighting by @jerrythornton. Etosha is relatively arid but is still a woodland ecosystem typical of much of the African savannah. In contrast, this Observation of the Week post about a @Peringuey’s Adder sighting by @robert\_taylor gives a sense for the more arid parts of the country among the dunes not far from Walvis Bay.

The number of observations per month has been ticking up since 2017 roughly following whats happening in Botswana. I suspect the drivers are also similar which I speculated about in the Botswana post yesterday. Like in Botswana, the Southern African community that moved to iNat from iSpot a few years ago appears to be the source of most of the activity from Namibia.

@alexdreyer holds both the top observer and top identifer positions, he also leads in half of the categories including plants and insects. @alanhorstmann is the second top identifier and leads in birds and mammals. Thanks to other top identifiers in Namibia such as @tonyrebelo, @colin25, @martin\_weigand, @wynand\_uys, and @johnnybirder!

What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist in Namibia? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@alexdreyer @martin_weigand @peter_erb @wolfachim @jurga_li @colin25 @happyasacupcake @alanhorstmann @tonyrebelo @johnnybirder

We’ll be back tomorrow in Honduras!

We're in Botswana for the 51st stop on the iNaturalist World Tour - part of a Southern Africa duo (we'll be in Namibia tomorrow). The top observer is @botswanabugs based on the Eastern side of Botswana near the second top observer @tuli, a retired botanist and insect enthusiast. @robert\_taylor, an ecologist based in northern Botswana, has activity centered near the Okavango Delta region along with @ricky\_taylor, @joachim, and @dewald2. @muir, now based in Alaska, did research in the Kalahari in a previous life where his Botswana observations are centered. There is a cluster of top observers in the 4-corners area (@craigpeter, @echo-lawrence, @supergan). The 4-corners area is where Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe meet and is gateway to some iconic parks like Chobe National Park and sights like Victoria Falls.

The number of observations per month jumped towards the end of 2017. This coincides with when the Southern Africa community formerly on iSpot joined iNaturalist as described here. But its a bit odd because migrated observations from iSpot had their original iSpot creation dates preserved, so its unclear exactly why the rate of newly created observations jumped up here. There have been some home grown activity in Botswana such as this Okavanga Fishes project orchestrated by @tshepibotumile thanks to short lived funding by JRS and the heroic volunteer efforts of @robert\_taylor. You can read more about @robert\_taylor in this Observation of the Week post about a sighting of his from Namibia.

Most of the top identifiers joined iNaturalist with the arrival of the Southern Africa community described above including @alanhorstmann who is the top identifiers overall and leads in leads Botswana bird IDs in addition to having expertise in southern African plants. @colin25 is the second top identifier and leads fungi, @beetledude leads insects, @wynand\_uys leads in arachnids and fish, and @alexdreyer leads in plants. This move was orchestrated by @tonyrebelo, an ecologist at SANBI and also a top identifier in Botswana. Other top identifiers in Botswana predate the arrival of this community including @jakob who's been a dominant force in the African community on iNaturalist since its early days and @johnnybirder an ecologist originally from South Africa now based in the US. Many thanks to other top identifiers such as @calebcam and @ldacosta.

What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist in Botswana? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@botswanabugs @tuli @robert_taylor @joachim @dewald2 @alanhorstmann @colin25 @johnnybirder @jakob @tonyrebelo

We’ll be back tomorrow in nearby Namibia!

Today, we start Week 8 of the iNaturalist World Tour. This week will take us to Luxembourg
Botswana and Namibia in Southern Africa, Honduras and Puerto Rico* in the Neotropics, Turkey which straddles the boundary between Europe and Asia, and Sri Lanka in Asia.

Let's kick off the week by celebrating our 50th stop in the tiny country of Luxembourg. Most of the top observers are in the southern part of Luxembourg, especially around the capital city of Luxembourg. @paul\_luap and @cecellina both have many observations around the capital and north, @carlobraunert is most active in the east, and @raedwulf68 in the south. The full observation map shows observations impressively distributed throughout the entire country.

There was very little activity in Luxembourg until a typical northern hemisphere seasonal pattern emerged in 2018. 2019 saw a dramatic spike from Luxembourg's participation in the City Nature Challenge in April, organized by @paul\_luap and @taniaw. It seems to have sparked a sustained higher level of participation in the months following, thanks in part to new contributors who joined around that time like entomologist @claudekolwelter @nobara and nature guide @guyw. @paul\_luap is also behind the Neobiota Luxembourg project to detect and respond to newly invasive species for the National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg.

Plants and insects are the most observed taxa. For identifications, @thierryh and @paul\_luap are nearly tied for plants. @ldacosta leads again for birds, mammals, and fish. Beetle expert @vitalfranz has contributed the most insect identifications, followed by @svenjachristian who leads for arachnids and other invertebrates. @alexwei leads for molluscs and @tom-kirschey-nabu for herps.

It looks like many users are associated with the National Museum of Natural History, are professionals or experienced and/or dedicated amateur naturalists, which is promising for a sustained active community in Luxembourg. What can we do to get more people in Luxembourg using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.

@wollef @guypopbio @jasonrgrant @marikoll @ktlux @amzamz @bobwardell @seladoneule @georges3 @dengel1967

We’ll be back tomorrow with Botswana!

*Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, but we're covering it separately as part of the World Tour because it has its own ISO 3166 code. As we proceed especially to more of the smaller islands, we'll encounter this situation again where outlying territories are highlighted separately from their associated country.

We end Week 7 of the iNaturalist World Tour in Lithuania. Much of the activity of the top observers is centered around the capital city of Vilnius in the southeast (@jurga\_li @almantas @arunasjuknevicius @itzhak46 @siju @dominykabreimelyt @tadas\_gruzinskas @gediminas). @solokultas has many observations along the Baltic Sea coast in the west while @ausrazilinskiene is focused on the area around Marijampolė. @tomasp has observations all over Lithuania and is working to translate the app into Lithuanian on CrowdIn. Thanks, @tomasp!

In general, activity peaks are in the spring and summer months. It looks like @eglemarija was responsible for some iNaturalist outreach starting in 2016 by creating some projects. Have there been any particularly successful events or outreach that contributed to any of those spikes?

There's strong overlap between the top identifiers in Lithuania and the top observers, with additional expertise coming from elsewhere in Europe. For example, @almantas is top for plants, fungi, molluscs, and other animals (closely followed by @jurga\_li for fungi, who is a lichen specialist), while @ldacosta is on the top again for birds, mammals, and fish. @borisb is tops for insects, like elsewhere in Europe. @laukines\_pievos, @kastani, and @leschij have made many identifications overall. @dutisdu has focused on arachnids and @tom-kirschey-nabu on reptiles and amphibians.

We saw in the forum that @tomasp would like to get Lithuanian common names imported in addition to the mobile app translation. What else can we do to get more people in Lithuania using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.

@kamanes @entomologe @arthur_nature_guide @bernadetak @tadasblinda @juhakinnunen @kristinavalinciene

We’ll be back tomorrow with Luxembourg!

Ukraine is the 48th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The top observer is @efarilis based near Mykolaiv on the Black Sea. Check out more from @efarilis on the Ukrainian Biodiversity Information Network here. The second top observer is @katerina\_kashirina, a researcher in the Sevastopol branch of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Other top observers with activity centered near Sevastopol include @melodi_96, @lenatara, who is researching the Flora of the Crimea, @andimitr, and @epikhin. To the northeast, @roman-evseev is based near Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine as is @juliana\_leshchenko. @davydovbotany is a botanist based at National Academy of Science of Ukraine in Kiev, which is the largest city in Ukraine, but his observations are centered a towards the East in the direction of Kharkiv. Other top observers with activity centered on Kiev include @missnarjess (check out the Edible Flora Worldwide project she admins here), @churilovam and others. You can read about a beautiful blue slug sighting by @cloudya in the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve in the western corner of Ukraine in this Observation of the Week post.

The peak in July, 2018 was driven nearly singlehandedly by @efarilis. The number of observations per month has been growing rapidly in 2019. This growth mirrors whats happening in Russia. I wonder if the outreach to Russian speaking communities described in that post has contributed to growth in Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.

In addition to being a top observer in Ukraine, @roman-evseev is the top identifier overall and also the top identifier for plants. @apseregin and @kastani have also contributed a great deal of Ukrainian plant knowledge and identifications from Russia and Kazakhstan respectively.
The third top identifier and top insect identifier is @kharkovbut. Check out his webpages dedicated to the Lepidoptera & Odonata of Kharkiv region of Ukraine. @katerina\_kashirina and @davydovbotany are other top identifiers who are also top observers. Thanks to all the other naturalists contributing identifications in to Ukrainian observations such as @mercantour, @borisb, @ldacosta, and @epikhin.

What can we do to make iNaturalist better in Ukraine? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@efarilis @katerina_kashirina @melodi_96 @roman-evseev @lenatara @davydovbotany @missnarjess @kastani @kharkovbut @apseregin

We’ll be back tomorrow with Lithuania!

Poland is the 47th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The top observers are quite evenly distributed in Poland. The top observer, @grzegorzgrzejszczak, is a botanist who, along with @ahospers and others, has activity centered in West Pomeranian. @wojtest, @slovianka, and @szuwarek are based in Greater Poland, Lubin, and Kuyavian-Pomeranian respectively. There is a small group of top observers such as @max09 and @jcsvenning with activity centered inLesser Poland in the area around the city of Krakow where the Wildlife of the Las Krzyszkowicki project administered by @annagazda is based. @jareks activity is centered in Subcarpathian and @jfgodeau in Masovian in the area around the city of Warsaw.

The number of observations per month spiked up markedly this summer. Does anyone know what drove this?

In addition to being the second top observer, @wojtest is the top identifier.and leads in plant IDs. As in many countries in Europe, @borisb leads in insect IDs and @ldacosta leads in bird IDs. Thanks to all the other top identifiers such as @almantas, @stanislaw, and @laukines\_pievos.

What can we do to make iNaturalist better in Poland? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@grzegorzgrzejszczak @wojtest @slovianka @ahospers @szuwarek @max09 @almantas @stanislaw @ldacosta @laukines_pievos

We’ll be back tomorrow with the Ukraine!

The Philippines is the 46th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The top observer @maractwin, needs no introduction on iNaturalist. As a self described "avid scuba diver, fish geek and underwater photographer" its clear why he's made so many observations in the Philippines which is one of the greatest scuba diving destinations in the world. @maractwin's observations are clustered in the southern part of Luzon near the capital of Manila and the island of Mindoro alongside other scuba-focused top observers such as @tonydiver and @tgosliner. @liselle and @michaela are other top observers in this region.

On the northern part of Luzon Island @rhabdornis's observations are centered along with @paulengler and @tonyg. @rhabdornis' observations highlight the incredible Lepidoptera diversity in the Philippines. You can read more about @tonyg's connection to Luzon Island in this Observation of the Week post. Further south, @curiousann is based in the Central Visayas region. Check out her blog here. @timcameron's observations, which also have an underwater-focus, are also centered in this region. Top observers @blogie, @greg3ph, and @shelley\_b have observations clustered in Mindanao to the south. Beetle researcher and National Geographic grantee @anncabras24 is also based in Mindanao and has several projects such as this one incorporating iNaturalist into her research.

There are several peaks in the Observation per month graph that reflect bursts of activity from a handful of top observers. For example, the peak in March 2015 was driven by a burst of observations near Davao by @blogie and observations by California Academy of Science researchers @tgosliner and @rmooi on Mindoro resulting from the 2015 Philippine Biodiversity Expedition. Similarly, the peaks in March and June of 2018 were driven by @rhabdornis and @maractwin respectively. During the last year, we seem to be seeing more sustained growth in the Philippines in contrast to these isolated peaks of activity.

In addition to being top observer in the Philippines, @maractwin is the top identifer. He also leads in fish identifications which is the second most "observose" category. Mollusks and 'other animals' are the third and fourth most observose categories reflecting all of the observations of marine mollusks like nudibranchs and marine organisms such as corals and echinoderms being observed by the underwater focused observers. Thanks to @hsini\_lin and @phelsumas4life for lending their expertise to these two categories and all the other underwater focused top identifiers such as @kemper, @joe\_fish, @sascha\_schulz, and @jpsilva. The top species categories based on number of observations (with @hkmoths as the top identifier) probably reflects all the Lepidoptera observations by @rhabdornis. @shawnodonnell is the top plant identifier lending his South East Asian botany expertise. You can read about his research through the SUNDASIA project here. Is this the first country we've examined where birds aren't in the top 5 species categories?

What can we do to get more people in the Philippines using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@maractwin @rhabdornis @curiousann @liselle @greg3ph @paulengler @kemper @phelsumas4life @joe_fish @hsini_lin

We’ll be back tomorrow with the Poland!