March 27, 2024

Of Isopods and Whelk Algal Gardens - Observation of the Week, 3/27/24

Our Observation of the Week is this isopod (potentially Exosphaeroma kraussi) on a Smooth Plough Shell snail (Bullia rhodostoma), seen in South Africa by @penel1!

“I happened to be climbing the mountains above Llandudno Beach (about 5 km from where I live in Hout Bay, Cape Town) on the Southern Apostles,” recalls Penelope Brown. 

The day was hot so afterwards I dropped down for a swim. The tide happened to be very low and the sea calm and very cold (due to intense upwelling). I had time before going home for lunch so I did a bit of iNaturalisting in the intertidal zone…see other photos on iNat at the time! And that is when I noticed the isopod / sea louse on the shell of one of the Bullia (plough shells). I was intrigued, so I took a few photos, posted them and then promptly forgot about them until the smiley sandy beach ecologist, Linda Harris (I don't know her), got all excited and proposed it as the Observation of the Day…To be honest, not being a very skilled iNaturalist participant, I did not even know that there was something like that!!  

Linda Harris (@linda_harris) is a South African marine scientist who specializes in coastal ecosystems, and as Penelope said she was quite excited by this observation. I reached out Linda for more information about the species involved, and any insights she might have into what was documented in the photos. She tells me that the snail is a type of whelk which can be found in the intertidal areas of sandy beaches, migrating along the beach as the tides change. 

These plough shells are scavengers with an exceptional olfactory system that allows them to detect even the faintest scents of beach-cast fish, jellyfish and bluebottles. They are so well adapted to the erratic supply of food that they can consume enough from one meal to last them for 18 days. However, they also have “algal gardens” on their shells on which they can forage when food is scarce. Because of their lifestyle of burrowing in and emerging from sand in the swash zone, with constant, relatively fast water movement around them, only the snails themselves can graze on their algal gardens. No other animal has previously been observed foraging on the algal gardens growing on these snails’ shells. That’s what makes this observation so unique. 

The plough shells must have been in the sheltered, shallow pool of water long enough for the isopod to detect the source of food and to start grazing on the algal garden. I haven't had a chance to key the isopod out yet, but I suspect this is one of the rocky shore isopods because I don't recognise it as a (at least, common) beach species. It’s the first time an interaction like this has ever been observed.

Penelope (above, on Table Mountain) grew up on a farm in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and credits the freedom she had to explore her surroundings for instilling her an interest in nature. “Walking with my father, she says, “we used to  sometimes listen to the ‘grass grow’ or sit quietly watching a buck nibble the vegetation, and when having tea in the forest with my mother, we'd leave little bits of chocolate cake for the fairies…it was magical!”

She ended up studying zoology at university, “on the advice of some senior students at my residence, because that department was ‘way more fun’ than the botany department (not really a good reason, but good enough as it turned out)” but ended up spending a lot of time with plants anyway, researching phytoplankton production and bloom dynamics in the the southern Benguela off the Cape Peninsula and diving in kelp beds. Then,

being increasingly intrigued by the ‘fynbos’ in of the Cape Floral Region while exploring the very different (cf Eastern Cape) mountains, the vlakte (plains) and coast of the Western Cape, my interests veered more into the terrestrial biota ... and this is where, later in life, iNaturalist eventually provided a space to 'formalize' my interactions with the incredibly biodiverse region in which we are privileged to live. (I actually started with iSpot with Tony Rebelo, a SANBI botantist friend, and dedicated local curator of iSpot and now on iNat, and a wonderful advocate for it!) 

I enjoy using iNat especially when I am on my own, and can immerse myself in it and bumble along happily in nature. I use it wherever I am, on and off, as it is a good record of where I have been and what we saw there. However, more specifically, I am tending to use it more and more for recording the locally indigenous plant species, and also for invasive alien plants, in our catchment (the Baviaans river catchment between Skoorsteenkop and Constantiaberg) which our community group is systematically clearing of invasive alien vegetation.

(Photo of Penelope taken by Judy Jepson. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)


- Linda says she based a lot of what she wrote on research by A.C. Brown, which you can find on Google Scholar. She also recommends checking out page 14 of this paper [PDF] about whelk algal gardens

- way back in 2016, @oryzias‘s observation of an isopod attached to a fish was an Observation of the Week!

Posted on March 27, 2024 07:01 PM by tiwane tiwane | 6 comments | Leave a comment

March 26, 2024

New Evidence of Presence Values Added

Separate from the new Established annotation, we’ve also added four new values for the Evidence of Presence annotation to address some requests from the community. They’re listed below, along with their definitions. Mousing over an annotation value on an observation page will bring up its definition.

  • Leafmine: Evidence of feeding between the dermal layers of a leaf [within Pterygota, with a long list of exceptions found here] Keyboard shortcut: e + l
  • Hair: Hair that is no longer attached to the organism from which it originated [within Mammalia, except Homo] Keyboard shortcut: e + h
  • Egg: Whole egg or part of an egg [within Animalia except Placentalia] Keyboard shortcut: e + e
  • Construction: Something created by an animal, made with or excavated from other materials [within Animalia except Homo] Keyboard shortcut: e + c

“Leafmine” should get more observations of leafmines in front of the eyes of experts, and also be useful in the taxon photo browser.

“Hair” is similar to the current “Feather” annotation for birds, but for mammals. It’s for hair that’s found on the ground or on another object.

“Egg” allows one to annotate an observation of a broken egg or piece of an egg without resorting to the Life Stage annotation for “Egg”, which isn’t usually accurate for observations of egg pieces. Often, by the time you find egg pieces, the organism is likely at a different stage of development, so using the Life Stage “Egg” annotation can cause inaccuracies with phenology data.

“Construction” is meant for observations of anything an animal has constructed or excavated out of other materials, such as nests, burrows, hives, spider webs, beetle galleries, egg sacs, and the like. Rather than make separate values for all of those things and assign them to specific taxa, we decided to make a more general annotation for ease of translation and maintenance. It’s not meant for coral reefs, galls, or mollusc shells, which are either part of the animal’s body or are instigated but not built by the animal. Note that an observation can have multiple Evidence of Presence annotation values, so a bird in a nest could be annotated as both “Organism” and “Construction”.


We understand that these don't address every request or need - it's a balance of trying to find terms that work for a fairly broad set of observations and help with parts of the site like the taxon page and taxon photo browser.

Finally, these new values will not be immediately available in the taxon page graphs, it will require extra design work.

Posted on March 26, 2024 08:00 PM by tiwane tiwane | 46 comments | Leave a comment

Piloting an Establishment Annotation with Amphibians and Reptiles


We’re piloting a new Establishment annotation with Amphibians and Reptiles to track observations of organisms that are wild but likely don’t belong to an established population.

Why are we doing this?

There is ongoing confusion about whether observations of non established individuals such as escaped pets should be marked as wild or captive/cultivated. Here’s an example.

What does Establishment mean?

The Establishment annotation has a single value: “Not Established”. Observations of individuals belonging to established populations should not have the “Not Established” value. Established populations are native populations or introduced populations that are self-sustaining.


For Amphibians and Reptiles, the Not Established value should be set for observations of escaped pets, released pets, hitchhikers on nursery plants, populations confined to within greenhouses, or (for sea turtles and sea snakes) extreme vagrancy (e.g. an asian sea snake washing up in California). Long-lived escaped/released pets such as turtles should be assumed to be Not Established unless there is evidence that the population is reproducing.


There is no value to mark observations as Established, only as Not Established. We did this because we wanted to replicate the voting between binary states behavior that occurs in the Data Quality Assessment using Annotations without impacting the existing user interface.


Why just Reptiles and Amphibians?

Reptiles and amphibians are a good place to start because they account for a large portion of controversial escaped / released pet observations but they aren’t prone to less defined states (e.g. extreme vagrancy in birds, pinioned ducks, managed ungulates, garden volunteer plants, etc.) which may require more discussion about the definition of Not Established before rolling this annotation out to other taxa.

How does this impact Captive/Cultivated?

We’d like to clarify that observations of individuals not in captivity at the time they were encountered should not be marked as Captive/Cultivated. For example:

A note on gray areas

We’ve tried to be as clear as possible on where the line between Captive and Wild and Established and Not Established states should lie. But there are broad gray areas between these states and many states are simply unknowable. We therefore don’t expect there to always be agreement for every gray area observation. Please use comments on the observation to work towards a shared understanding, but please make an effort to be respectful and polite in your comments and remember we can disagree without being disagreeable.

How do I exclude Not Established Reptiles and Amphibians from my searches?

We added some new Explore parameters that allow you to manually construct URLs to exclude Not Established observations from your searches. Here are some examples:

  • a search for reptiles in the US state of Colorado excluding any that are not established
  • a search for not established reptiles in Colorado
  • a search for not wild reptiles in Colorado

We’re excited that by applying the Species Tab view to search number (1) above iNaturalist can now filter the set of reptiles typically found in field guides which are generally restricted to established species only.

It also makes it easier to surface newly established populations, for example Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail (Aspidoscelis exsanguis) is not in the field guide above but is has been documented on iNaturalist as a newly established species in Colorado.

What about the escapee/non-established observation field value?

Many have been using the Escapee/Non-established Observation Field. While this annotation serves the same purpose, we did not migrate over data from the Observation Field. But please feel free to use that as a resource when adding your own annotations. It’s currently impossible to construct searches like number (1) above using Observation Fields so we encourage you to use the Annotation for Amphibians and Reptiles.

Posted on March 26, 2024 08:00 PM by loarie loarie | 25 comments | Leave a comment

A larger experiment to learn about the accuracy of iNaturalist observations

We launched our 3rd Observation Accuracy Experiment (v0.3) today. Thank you to everyone helping us conduct these experiments as we continue to learn how to improve accuracy on iNaturalist.

Changes in this Experiment

The only change is that this experiment uses a sample of 10,000 observations whereas the previous two experiments (v0.1 and v0.2) each used samples of 1,000 observations. We hope this larger sample size will allow give us more insight into more nuanced subsets of iNaturalist observations than the first two experiments.

The page for this experiment is already live and the stats will update once a day until the validator deadline at the end of the April 1st. You won’t be able to drill into the bars to see the sample observations or the validators until the deadline has passed.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone contacted as a candidate validator for participating in this experiment. This is a more ambitious experiment than the first two and very much appreciate your participation with this larger sample size - especially for those of you asked to review up to 100 observations! As always, please share any feedback or thoughts you may have on the topic of data quality on iNaturalist.

Posted on March 26, 2024 01:56 AM by loarie loarie | 51 comments | Leave a comment

March 19, 2024

Getting a Jelly out of Salp Soup - Observation of the Week, 3/19/24

Our Observation of the Week is this Flag-mouth Jelly (in the genus Diplulmaris), seen off of New Zealand by @millamuck!

“I studied marine biology and although I didn't end up working in that area, I continue to love the water,” says Camilla Caton. “I joke that you could put me in a bathtub with some sea monkeys and I'd be happy.”

Camilla credits her father for her instilling in her a passion for nature. 

From when I was little we'd hang on the couch and watch nature documentaries, get up at 4am to go to a local estuary and watch the native birds arrive, visit aquariums, zoos and reptile parks.

On March 3rd of this year, Camilla and her diving club took to the water, which is when she spotted the jelly you see here.

Our local dive club had a lot of students that day, so a dive buddy and I decided to toddle off and try a different spot. I'd done a couple of night dives there previously but hadn't been there during the day. The whole dive was absolutely incredible. Some parts were salp soup, not too many jellies, but the Diplumaris was the first of three jellies I'd not seen before.

If you take a look at the observation page, you’ll see that Camilla’s find generated some excitement. Luca Davenport-Thomas (@luca_dt), a marine biology student in New Zealand and avid iNatter, was one of the identifiers, and I contacted him for some insight into the find. It looks like the jury’s still out on a confirmed species ID, but Luca said the observation could be significant.

I had thought it could be Diplulmaris antarctica since that habitat isn't too far away. And I don't think they have been seen beyond Antarctic waters, which is quite exciting. But I never realised there is actually a different species of Diplulmaris, D. malayensis which is apparently very rare. As part of the plankton bloom @millamuck saw (and I sadly missed) there were also Phacellophora jellyfish (I found a dead one at the same spot the next day after most of the plankton had gone. Which is a very southern record since they aren't known from Antarctica). It makes me think the rare organisms in the bloom like the Diplulmaris could instead have been from up North so could actually be Diplulmaris malayensis! 

Speaking of Luca, Camilla (above with her diving club, all the way on the left with the tattooed arm) jokingly says she joined iNat partly because of his encouragement. “I kept getting pressured to upload my photos onto here! Mostly by @luca_dt

I like posting unusual stuff or sometimes if I'm just stoked with a photo!! I use iNaturalist for ID a lot, and will quite often research what species I could find when I travel to new spots.

I only got my open water in February last year, and am up to 180 dives already! Best thing I've ever done. Loving taking photos at the moment. Mostly macro but am only just starting on that journey.

(Photo of Camilla and the diving club taken by Claire Murphy. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)


- you can follow Camilla on Instagram here!

- “salp soup” is a real thing. Here’s an article (and some video) about a bloom off of New Zealand back in 2015. 

- @luca_dt’s amazing siphonophore photo was an Observation of the Week back in 2022!

Posted on March 19, 2024 06:28 PM by tiwane tiwane | 5 comments | Leave a comment

March 12, 2024

So a Snake and a Centipede Meet on a Trail... - Observation of the Week, 3/12/24

Our Observation of the Day is this meeting of a Chinese Red-headed Centipede (Scolopendra mutilans, 왕지네 in Korean) and an Ussuri Mamushi pit viper (Gloydius ussuriensis, 쇠살모사 in Korean) in South Korea! Seen by @lhurteau.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Leslie Hurteau has been teaching English in South Korea since 2017 and takes daily morning birding trips on Jeju Island, where he currently lives. 

I always keep my eyes open for any wildlife, especially reptiles and interesting arthropods during the warmer months. I was walking along a trail in a local city park, and some movement caught my eye so I looked down to see a snake (Gloydius ussuriensis) and a Chinese Red-headed Centipede (Scolopendra mutilans). It seemed the snake was interested in the centipede and was eyeing it down. The centipede scuttled under a nearby leaf, at which point the snake prepared itself to strike. 

Unfortunately the excitement ended there, as some other people walked by and caused both the snake and centipede to move off trail and into the side vegetation. So, I didn't see who won the standoff. A friend (@j-j) previously found another Gloydius species consuming the same type of centipede on the mainland, so I think it's possible the snake would have won this, although given it appeared to be a smaller juvenile, it wouldn't surprise me if the centipede would have a strong chance against it.

A fun side note, Gloydius ussuriensis is the only Gloydius species (a group of venomous pit vipers in East Asia) found on Jeju, and its colouration is so different from the mainland populations that it has attracted some potential interest from local researchers.

Not only do Gloydius snakes live in mainland Korea, they range west to the Ural Mountains, into South Asia, and east to Japan. Like other pit vipers, they inject venom through hinged fangs and sport heat-sensing pits on their snouts.

Chinese red-headed centipedes occur in East Asia, including Japan, and average about 20 cm (8 in) in length. Like other centipedes, they’re predatory and they subdue prey by injecting their venom through forcipules, which are modified front legs. 

Leslie (above, scanning for birds on Jeju Island), credits his parents for his interest in nature. They’d take him to parks, especially Stanley Park, in Vancouver, “and my dad would point out the names of different birds and plants that he knew.” He eventually volunteered with the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC and the Stanley Park Ecology Society.

Leslie started using iNat back in Canada, but really got into it after his move to Korea.

After moving to Korea and seeing how scarce information was in English on local fauna and flora, I decided to go all in and document nearly everything I find, with a focus on birds. Uploading every bird photo I could take greatly improved my bird identification skills, helping me learn how to spot various features even in not-so-ideal photos. 

It's been a fun journey, having now seen over 370 different species of birds in Korea, including one species that was a national first for the country. I'm happy to say it's a different situation today in 2024 with many observations in Korea from many different people. After moving to Jeju Island, my favourite part of Korea, I have been working even harder to upload observations to document the wildlife here. With development happening so fast in this country, it can be important to document what is here now in case habitat changes or is lost (which happens often here), or as species ranges change to deal with development and climate change.

iNaturalist has helped improve my identification skills, as well as make connections with other like minded individuals, here in Korea and elsewhere. It's a wonderful globally minded website that I recommend to anyone with an interest in nature.

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. Photo of Leslie was taken by Jiwone Lee.)


- some giant centipedes eat bats!

- two previous Observations of the Week document centipedes as prey: this one by @msone, and another by @magdastlucia!

Posted on March 12, 2024 09:24 PM by tiwane tiwane | 10 comments | Leave a comment

March 7, 2024

Some thoughts on ML accuracy

The folks on the iNat team who work on the iNaturalist Computer Vision Model and the iNaturalist Geomodel spend a lot of time thinking about how accurate the Machine Learning (ML) models are, and how we can improve them. It's a particular challenge since our computer vision training dataset grows by over a thousand taxa and by over a million photos every month.

We tend to visualize accuracy using charts like you'll see below, and we use these charts to validate our models internally: are they ready for prime time? Is this month's model good enough for release?

Sometimes our accuracy numbers would drift from month to month, and recently we set out to explore why that might be.

Some of this could be due to test set sampling differences - if we test using a batch A of photos for January and batch B for February, then we can expect to get slightly different results. It's also a little tricky to compare models directly to each other since the taxonomies are different. The Feb model knows about taxa that the January model didn't, for example.

Another theoretical reason might be some combination of ML training run differences: random initialization, optimizer, and variance in batch selection. In our experience this doesn't look like a big source of model accuracy difference from month to month but we'll keep an eye on it.

Another reason why our models might show different accuracy numbers from month to month is training set sampling error. We previously described the transfer learning strategy that we are using to train these monthly models. Models share the same foundational knowledge, but we use new photos each month to fine-tune the base model. For commonly observed taxa, we don't train on every image we have. Instead, we select at most 1,000 photos for training. For a taxon like Western Honey Bee, which our users have upload more than 400,000 observations of, every month we select a different fraction of photos to train on. Some months we might get better or worse photos than others, and that might result in better or worse performance.

In order to start exploring this last reason, when we made the export for the 2.11 model, we also made an alternate version of the export with the same taxonomy but selecting a different batch of photos. Then we trained an alternate model on this alternate export, and we did some comparison.

For each of the major groupings shown in the chart below, we selected 1,000 random RG observations not seen by the model during training process and compared the species ID'd by the community to the species predicted by the model suggestions. If the model agreed with the community, we considered the model correct, while if the model disagreed, we considered it incorrect.

Here's a chart showing the two models, accuracy performance compared. The y-axis shows top1 accuracy as a percentage, the x-axis shows major clade or geographical groupings, and the colors represent the different models compared against each other. The *-vision colors are computer vision model accuracy only, and the *-combined colors show accuracy when combining the computer vision model with our geo model.

(Note: I'm red-green colorblind and I have some difficulty distinguishing the 2.11-alternate-vision and 2.11-alternate-combined colors, but they are in the same order in each major grouping, so I can still interpret the chart. If anyone is struggling to interpret the chart, please let me know and I'll see if I can make a more accessible variant.)

For someone who hasn't seen one of these charts before, I'd like to point out a few interesting interpretations or conclusions. First, combining computer vision and geo modeling performance helps a lot, sometimes as much as 20%. Second, we can see our dataset bias in this result: our models know a lot more about taxa in North America and Europe than it does about taxa in South America or Africa. This mirrors our observer community and our dataset of photos to train on. When we have more images from an area, we have better performance. There are some other interesting questions to explore about why our models perform better or worse on some taxonomy groupings like herps or mollusks compared to birds or plants.

However, in the context of understanding this alternate experiment, we can takeaway that two models trained on the same taxonomy but different photos will see a small degree of variance in both computer vision and combined performance on the same test set.

Here's a look at how the 2.11-alternate model improved (or didn't) when compared directly against the 2.11 model:

We can see from this that we can probably expect less than a 2% variance from model run to model run based on sampling.

From this, we can do a better job of characterizing our model accuracy month-to-month: are things improving, getting worse, staying the same? It looks to us like our models are staying about the same in average accuracy while adding 1,000 new taxa a month. We think that's a pretty great result.

Another great way we can use the this experiment is to judge how much a change to model training or technology is really improving model accuracy. If we try out a supposedly better piece of technology to train a future model, but we see less than a 2% accuracy bump, then we should probably be a little suspicious.

We're excited to share the results here with you, and we plan to share accuracy metrics about our models when we release them from now on.

Posted on March 7, 2024 04:26 PM by alexshepard alexshepard | 12 comments | Leave a comment

March 5, 2024

Ant Stacking Assassin - Observation of the Week, 3/5/24

Our Observation of the Day is this ant-encrusted assassin bug nymph (in the genus Inara), seen in Malaysia by @victor0001!

Victor Heng, a teacher at the Natural History Museum in London, got going with iNaturalist (as well as iRecord) in earnest during the lockdowns of 2020. 

I started using it to record everything I was seeing in my local parks. I started using the maps to look for places with few records in my area and set myself a mission of characterizing the plants and invertebrates in those blank areas. Since then I've started to look more for phenology, recording flower plants at early and late points in the season.

For Lunar New Year Victor and his partner visited Victor’s family in Malaysia, where he took the photo you see here.

This was only the 3rd time I've been to Malaysia, and the first time I'd been since picking up the iNaturalist habit, so I was very excited to have an opportunity to explore rainforests with this new perspective. A few of my relatives live in Penang and, knowing that my partner and I like nature, took us up to Penang hill to experience the canopy walkway.

Several of my cousins and younger relatives were along for the walk, and I was inevitably at the back. My photographing of things encouraged them to also take a closer look at what was around, if only to point it out as something I might want to take photos of. The assassin bug was one of these spots. My cousin called me over and pointed it out, wondering if this small black thing was a bit of poop or actually an animal. I initially thought it might be a spider, but once I saw it through the camera lens I realized what it was, and was amazed at all the ants it had stacked on its back. I'd still like to know how it reaches back to get them stacked up, and how the ants stick together up there.

Yunhan (@eggshe11), who works on identifying assassin bugs in Asia, came across Victor’s find and identified it as being in the genus Inara. I contacted Yunhan about the ID and any info they might have about this behavior. 

To my knowledge, there are 2 common genera of carcass-stacking assassin bugs in southeast Asia - Acanthaspis and Inara. Where I'm from (Singapore), both genera have been relatively well documented (see this page on Inara and this one on Acanthaspis for example). As the photographer Nicky Bay (@nickybay) mentions on his page, Inara nymphs are identifiable by being less concealed overall and having a “neater” ant stack. Acanthaspis nymphs tend to be covered in debris including their heads, legs, etc (example, also visible in this popular observation) while for Inara you will always be able to see the bare legs and the head complete with large eyes resembling the adult (for example, this observation). 

For Inara, post-feeding, a nymph will use its front and mid legs to adjust the carcass to a satisfactory shape, subsequently transferring it underneath the existing stack onto the dorsal surface of the abdomen using its hind legs. The abdomen possesses glands which secrete a sticky substance, and these secretions also hold the stack together. After ecdysis, nymphs will transfer the stack off their molt, rather than start a new one. I'm not sure why they keep a stack, although I think the main reasons lean towards (1) attracting/pacifying ants via pheromones from the carcasses (2) predator avoidance/deterrence. 

Victor (above, in Kuala Lumpur), traces his interest in nature back to his childhood, when he’d collect rocks or bring home insects on sticks. Later in life he became interested in social science and teaching, and is happy he can combine those interests in his current position. He’s currently developing the museums new outdoor program, to be held in its redeveloped gardens. One project involves the students analyzing “bycatch” from moth traps, that represent insects from hypothetical farms. 

The early pilots of this session have been really rewarding. Students often have strong reactions when they first put their petrie dish of dead insects under the microscope. Mostly a mix of surprise and fascination, but occasionally disgust. But in the vast majority of cases, all their reactions drift towards fascination at the variety of insect forms. Its been great to be able to see their shift in attitude towards insects, and appreciate their importance to ecology. And understand the importance of ecology to agriculture and humans.

He’s been using iNaturalist in this work with the museum, tracking which invertebrates are found on which plants in the gardens, for example. 

The process of submitting observations, roughly evaluating the accuracy of iNat's suggested identifications, and being able to quickly look up the taxonomy, I've also found to be a great way of getting a feel for the characteristics of different families. I really like going to someplace I've never been, and recognizing plant and animal families. It’s a nice feeling to be walking somewhere and think to myself “I don't exactly know these ones, but I think I know your relatives.”

(Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.)


- check out Victor's Knowing Nature podcast, about enviromental education!

- here's some footage of an assassin bug in action.

- take a look at the amazing panoply of assassin bugs on iNat!

Posted on March 5, 2024 11:27 PM by tiwane tiwane | 9 comments | Leave a comment

March 2, 2024

iNaturalist February News Highlights

We can’t believe it’s already March! Here are our February news highlights. If you missed last month's highlights, you can catch up here.

Species Discoveries


Usually we talk about species discoveries by mentioning a few examples from the news. But this month, we wanted to highlight some of the great work partners in the iNaturalist Network are doing to better find and surface iNaturalist observations that represent important discoveries.

  • iNaturalist Canada coordinators at the Canadian Wildlife Federation have set up this project to track and highlight Canada’s most groundbreaking observations.
  • iNaturalist Uruguay site admin ​​@flo_grattarola describes on her blog efforts to surface novel observations posted from Uruguay.
  • This great article by Naturalista Colombia site admin @carolinasoto in the oldest newspaper in Colombia describes all the work she and colleagues at the Humboldt Institute are doing to leverage iNaturalist for conservation impact in Colombia.
  • Similarly, this article highlights @paul_luap’s efforts to lead citizen scientists as site admin for iNaturalist Luxembourg.




    Range Extensions and Distributions


    Wolverines haven’t been spotted on iNaturalist in the Cascade mountains south of Mount Rainier in Washington State. This article describes how the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating rare range extensions south into Oregon and turning to iNaturalist for help.

    There were many articles this month demonstrating how iNaturalist is being used to better understand the distributions and biogeography of species including:


    Invasive Species Science


    Some of the complexities around invasive species are captured in this article about a new study by @christiaan18. Oaks are introduced in South Africa and some are becoming invasive. On the other hand, a spreading invasive beetle is devastating the iconic oaks planted throughout cities like Cape Town.

    Meanwhile, Australia’s iconic native Eucalypts (which just received a huge boost on iNaturalist thanks to contributions from Eucalypt expert @dnicolle) are being devastated by the spread of invasive myrtle rust. This article describes @myrtle_rust_martino’s efforts to prevent the spread in Australia with the help of citizen scientists through the Gum Tree Guardians project.

    Speaking of myrtle rust, an increasing number of natural resource agencies are turning to iNaturalist to help monitor invasive species, as this myrtle rush announcement form the New Zealand Department of Conservation demonstrates. This article describes how iNaturalist is being used to monitor invasive Stinknet in Saguaro National Park as the National Park Service kicks off Invasive Species Awareness Week with both place-based activities and species-focused resources leveraging iNaturalist.


    Conservation


    Monitoring

    This April, Periodical cicadas should emerge in northern Louisiana on their 13-cycle, but scientists fear the brood may be extinct. This article describes how scientists are turning to iNaturalist to help. Other examples of monitoring include:




    Restoration

    The role iNaturalist plays in conservation isn’t restricted to monitoring; it also extends to land preservation and restoration.


    Climate Change Science


    Warmer winters are disrupting the life cycles of insects, and iNaturalist is helping scientists understand this challenge:

    • This article describes @fuzzybumblebee’s efforts to understand the consequences of being active in the winter on honey bee populations in Minnesota.
    • Similarly, this article shows how iNaturalist data is helping scientists understand why sickly, normally dormant Red-based Jezebel butterflies were spotted this winter across Hong Kong.

    If curbing climate change feels overwhelming, this National Geographic article includes iNaturalist as a tool for individual action that can help children feel empowered when confronting climate change.


    Secondary data science


    Last month we highlighted the concept of “secondary data” as all the important data captured in iNaturalist observations beyond the core species occurrence. This month’s examples include this fascinating study by @alexkerr on spider web architecture that resulted from an analysis of over 13,000 iNaturalist observations of Feather-legged Orbweaver.

    • This study used iNaturalist images to document ray stranding events to understand what’s causing them.
    • This study used iNaturalist images to document the mushroom eating habits of native Chilean snails.


    iNaturalist Impact on AI Research

    Alongside satellite imagery and environmental DNA (eDNA) data, citizen science data is one of the only scalable sources of environmental data. Many AI projects are now combining multiple sources of data in exciting new ways. For example, this article describes a study that combines iNaturalist data and satellite imagery to map croplands. Likewise, this Popular Science article on advances in eDNA describes how it will complement iNaturalist biodiversity data. This article describes how AI advances are changing birdwatching and the role iNaturalist plays.

    Bioblitzes and Events



    iNaturalist’s Human Health and Social Science Impact

    Clear air and clean water are important contributors to human health. This article describes how iNaturalist is used to monitor macroinvertebrates as water quality indicators in Colombia. Similarly this article describes how the National Park Service incorporates iNaturalist to help leverage lichens as indicators of air quality.

    iNaturalist’s Education Impact


    We enjoyed this article about Ecoexplore, a Kindergarden through 8th grade environmental science program developed by @jmarchal and colleagues at the North Carolina Arboretum that leverages iNaturalist.


    iNatters in the News


    Thank you to everyone who participated in iNaturalist this February and we look forward to a busy Northern Hemisphere Spring - your support makes it all possible!


    Donate to iNaturalist


    Posted on March 2, 2024 08:51 AM by loarie loarie | 7 comments | Leave a comment

    February 28, 2024

    A School of Rays in Mexico! - Observation of the Week, 2/28/24

    Our Observation of the Week is this school of Golden Cownose Rays (Rhinoptera steindachneri, Raya tecolote in Spanish), seen in Mexico by @flore_boituzat!

    Flore Boituzat grew up in the French countryside and says she’s always been interested in nature. She’s a food engineer, and tells me “I had the opportunity to do one semester in Mexico to do marine biology, that's where I started to dive and go snorkeling.”

    She also met her boyfriend Alberto Alcalá (@alboertoalcala) while there, who’s a diver and an oceanologist, who introduced her to iNaturalist. 

    After her semester in Mexico, Flore had to finish her last year of schooling in France but she recently returned to Mexico. “As a welcome gift, Alberto took me out for a dive where we saw all these beautiful rays. I felt really blessed. :)”

    Golden cownose rays occur in the eastern Pacific Ocean, from Peru up through Mexico, and are often found in groups like this. Like other rays, it doesn’t have teeth but bony plates in its mouth for crushing its prey - mostly bottom dwelling species. It’s listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN, as it’s often caught as bycatch by artisanal gillnet and trawling fisheries. 

    Flore (above) continues to use iNat, and continues to share her nature photos on iNaturalist. 

    I like nature photography and he knows about the biology part, so thanks to iNaturalist I learn about the species I'm seeing, and I can also see where a species is found a well as, it’s habits and characteristics, so it's easier for me to find and to capture photos of it. I think biodiversity is part of the beauty and the magic of this planet, and to take pictures of biodiversity helps me share it; I find it very nice and fun to see what's surrounding us.

    (Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. Photo of Flore was taken by Alberto Alcalá.)


    - here’s footage of a golden cownose ray school!

    Posted on February 28, 2024 09:19 PM by tiwane tiwane | 8 comments | Leave a comment