For over five decades, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo (FARC) guerilla group waged a civil war in Colombia. After FARC signed a ceasefire in 2016, there was an opportunity to explore and survey the biodiverse regions the group had occupied, and the need to incorporate thousands of guerrillas into Colombian society. 

The initiative GROW Colombia, supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF-UK),  is working to sustainably develop “Colombia’s agri-industry and bio-economy for the benefit of the Colombian people,” and they are collaborating with Jaime Gonogora (@jaimegongora), an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney and native Colombian. Professor Góngora has been working with the former guerrillas to conduct biodiversity surveys of the areas they occupied, and is using iNaturalist as one of the tools in their work.

I recently spoke with Professor Góngora (above) via Zoom about his work with the former guerrillas and how they are using iNaturalist. 

Jaime Góngora grew up in the mountains of Colombia and, after moving to Bogotá, had to work to pay for his university education, becoming the first in his family to graduate from college. “I wasn’t the most talented student at all,” he says, “[but] I knew that I loved biology. I wanted to become an academic, a scientist, [and] conserve nature.” He credits meeting Chris Moran and Frank Nicholas of the University of Sydney, who were doing genetics work, and

They said to me “We don’t think you’re ready yet, but what if we offer you a multi-year plan and you can come and work with us.” I didn’t believe them but I didn’t see a lot of possibilities in Colombia, I knocked doors everywhere. I stuck to [their] plan, and I was able to apply for a scholarship in 1999.

Jaime has since settled in Sydney, where he now has a family and is advising students of his own. One of them was working in the United Kingdom and connected him with the GROW Colombia initiative, which is directed by Professor Federica Di Palma. He started working with them on programs for academics, but tells me “I realized that something was missing there.

I said OK, I have these ideas. I already had some experiences in Colombia working with communities, I knew a little bit about the history, about the situation, and I said we can do this with these combatants. What’s simple but powerful is we can empower these combatants to know and understand nature, so they can contribute to science in doing inventories of biodiversity but actually using that for ecotourism...they are undertaking in remote areas of Colombia as part of the reincorporation into society. 

The program, called Peace with Nature*, came together over the period of about eighteen months. Much of this preparation involved building a network of Colombian scientists and researchers who could help, as Jaime wanted the former combatants to build relationships not only with him but with a community of scientists in the country. As they started to design workshops and trainings, they made sure to not only teach standard methods of taking inventories (including using binoculars for wildlife, “which they had [previously] only used to look at enemies [with]”) but to combine that with the former combatants’ deep traditional knowledge of the environment they’d lived in for decades. For example, some former guerrillas have pointed out the differences between two plants that a scientist thought were the same species. 

Training also included how-tos for iNaturalist, and iNat’s partner in Colombia, Instituto Humboldt, has been supporting Peace with Nature. Each survey team included a group who were taking photos for iNaturalist, and when they returned to the villages, they uploaded their finds to iNat. Jaime tells me they plan to curate the observations, and that at least one former guerrilla, @ricardosemillas, has really taken to iNat. 

These are only the first steps of course, and the group envisions engaging future ecotourists with iNat as well. “[The former guerrillas will] go and...show them the attractions..and the tourists can take pictures so we will be encouraging tourists to increase the participatory inventories through iNaturalist. In that way, tourists become citizen scientists and increase the inventories [in the area],” says Jaime. 

While the entire endeavor is clearly close to his heart, Jaime is especially proud of the progress he’s observed when it comes to former enemies bonding over nature. Due to security issues, Colombian military and police - who not too long ago were fighting the guerrillas - accompanied the group and Jaime recalls 

I saw an opportunity in particular with the police being close to us, and I said “Hey, come here, you can be involved,” and I have pictures of the guerillas teaching children from schools and the police how to use iNaturalist...In the last workshop we have the first member of the military officially being part of the inventories.

People think sometimes to see the negative aspects of people. My tendency is to see the positive aspects of people. What is positive there that we can use to connect people to a change in behavior that could be transformational for the purpose of your project, in this case conserving nature and reincorporating people into society...iNaturalist is contributing to empower people to do transformational and positive change and to global peace.

- There are a few other articles about this program, check them out here, here, and here.

- And a nice video about the program here. It’s in Spanish and English. As an English speaker, I’ve found that if I turn on captions then, in the gear icon, choose Auto Translate and English, it’s actually pretty understandable. I imagine it works well for other languages too.

* Jaime wants to note that Peace with Nature has been a collaborative project in which he has engaged more than 10 academic, research and government institutions including the Amazonian Scientific Research Institute SINCHI, ECOMUN, ARN, UniAmazonia, and the UN Verification Mission.

Photos courtesy of Jaime Góngora.

Our Observation of the Week is this Praon wasp pupa (and its aphid host), seen in the United Kingdom by @lee\_i1978!

“Though it would be great to be able to regale you with a story of trekking for miles into the wilds,” says Lee Ismail, a Curator of Natural Sciences at Brighton Museums in the United Kingdom, “the story behind the observation is fairly mundane and is possibly the most comfortable nature observation possible!” While at home, Lee walked past his window and noticed the strange structure and organism you see above. 

Initially thinking it was the underside of a tiny snail, I noticed wings as I passed, causing me to pause and take a closer look. That's when I noticed that it was an aphid of some sort, but was stuck to the window with a suction cup shaped structure, tied down with fine silk strands.

He originally posted it to iNat with an ID of Animalia, but after doing a quick search on “Aphid with suction cup structure”, he saw it was the pupa of the wasp genus Praon, a member of the Subfamily Aphidiinae, which all parasitize aphids. A few other iNat users agreed, and @haukekoch provided a link to this paper describing a species in the genus, Praon volucre, which is fascinating. 

According to author Bryan P. Beirne, female wasps oviposit on aphids or on anything that resembles an aphid. The larva eats its host from the inside, and by its fourth instar usually kills its host,

and as a result of its consuming the decaying parts of the Aphis the alimentary tract of the larva, which in previous instars is greenish or greyish, becomes dark brown in this and the following instars and so the larva becomes visible through the integument of the Aphis.

When it reaches its fifth instar, the larva cuts open a hole in the aphid body and spins its suction cup-like cocoon, where it pupates. This is usually attached to a leaf, but in the case of Lee’s observation, it attached itself to his window, giving us a glimpse into its underside! As Lee says, “[this find] does neatly demonstrate that there is fascinating nature all around us though (we're always trying to convince visitors of this at the museum!)”

One of only two people specifically based in caring for the natural history collections at the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust, Brighton, Lee (below) says 

we don't have much time to carry out our own research, and our input into research is in assisting those who use our collections for their research. Most recently this has included DNA sampling for king cheetahs, determining population genetics for Peregrine Falcon populations in Southern England and identifying new species of lepidoptera from British Guiana.

He’s also been working on his nature photography skills, particularly macro photography of late, both to illustrate work-related blog posts and, since being furloughed, “I have continued to photograph nature for the pure pleasure of enjoying the natural world!”

Since starting on iNat in this year’s City Nature Challenge, Lee, who grew up in Southern England, Malaysia and Oman, tells me

Though I'd used similar sites in the past, I found iNaturalist to be really user friendly, and so I continued to post observations after the CNC2020 had finished. Initially I started recording observations I'd made on visits around the world as well as at home in the UK. Since then I've recorded regular observations I've made both at home and on walks around Southern England during travel restrictions and furlough. 

iNaturalist hasn't changed how I see the natural world, but it has changed how I interact with it. I'd always noted where I'd observed interesting nature but hadn't recorded those observations anywhere accessible to the wider community…

Whilst I have no idea what the data may eventually be used for, it is gratifying to see observations made on vacation being added to projects such as Kea Monitoring (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/44099262) or US Federally and Endangered Species (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/44102776) projects. The site is also great at seeing just how many different species I've seen over the years.

Here’s a wasp ovipositing on an aphid, although I personally can’t confirm whether it’s an adult Praon or not. Pretty cool, though!

It’s interesting to compare this number with the total numbers of species that we think are out there. Most agree that there are around 2 million species with names and that many more species exist that haven’t yet been named. We use IUCN’s numbers from 2010 which tally 1,740,330 species of plants, animals and fungi. Using this denominator, iNaturalist has now censused about 17% of all named species.

The figure below shows this split out by taxonomic category. Each square represents 1,000 species. There are 1,740 total squares and 300 green squares representing the subset observed on iNaturalist.

Most of the species on iNaturalist represent plants and insects but these are also the most speciose groups. In fact, even though the same number of plant and insect species have been observed on iNaturalist (roughly 100,000 each), this represents a much smaller fraction of the total insect diversity (11%) versus the total plant diversity (33%).

The group with the smallest percentage of species observed was Arachnids (8%) and the four terrestrial vertebrate groups (birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals) were the only groups with greater than 50% observed. The denominators are probably underestimated as new species have been described since these IUCN numbers were released in 2010, but these percentages are likely not too far off.

In addition to thinking about how many species we’ve observed on iNaturalist, it’s interesting to consider how quickly we’re accumulating new species. The graphs below show the numbers of species observed on iNaturalist over time. The graph on the left is for North American Birds and the graph on the right is for South American Fish. For North American Birds, we do seem to be reaching a plateau (i.e. we've running out of missing species). In fact, over the last 12 months we’ve averaged 19,696 North American Bird observations for each new species tallied. In contrast, for South American Fish the number of species does not seem to be plateauing at all. Over the last 12 months we’ve tallied a new species for every 14 observations of South American Fish added on average.

Here’s the species groups and continents (e.g. South American Fish) where we’ve averaged fewer than 100 observations to tally a new species sorted by this obs/sp stat. Underrepresented groups like fishes and mollusks are over represented in this subset as are continents like South America and Africa.

These are the species groups and continents where we’ve averaged more than 100 and fewer than 1,000 observations to tally a new species.

Lastly, these are the species groups and continents where we’re averaging over 1,000 observations to log a new species. Here, North America and Europe dominate alongside over represented groups like birds and other terrestrial vertebrates.

To tally a new species on iNaturalist, several things have to happen: we need observations from that taxonomic group and location to be posted, the images must reveal enough detail for the species to be identified, and someone with the skills, time, and interest needs to provide an identification. There are steps you can do at each point in this process to increase the overall rate.

To generate more observations, spend some time observing taxa in places you don’t normally visit. If you focus mainly on terrestrial vertebrates, try observing some fish and invertebrates. Invest in some gear to attract or capture creatures you don’t normally encounter like a moth light or aquatic sampling gear or a macro lens for your phone. Try to get others observing by organizing a bioblitz.

To increase the probability your observations will be identified, do your best to take identifiable photos. If you are an identifier specializing in a certain group, write a journal post to encourage people to pay attention to the characters you know are important. Also, engage with observers. Often they can relocate the critter and take photos of the characters you want as in this exchange between @agapakisnikos and @naufalurfi:

Lastly, to help grow the expertise needed to identify species, consider investing in becoming a more active identifier yourself. Pick a location or taxonomic group (or both) to specialize in. Dig into the scientific literature and learn the jargon for the museum characters the literature tends to focus on. Learn how to follow a dichotomous key and interpret a taxonomic description for your group. Sites like research gate and sci-hub provide access to an increasing number of papers. Don’t be afraid to learn from the community. Ask identifiers how they were able to identify particular observations you want to learn from. If they provide information and references try to understand them and see if you come to the same conclusion. If you can’t, explain where you’re stuck and ask for help. Encourage people you know with expertise to join iNaturalist and share their knowledge.

Of the 54,000 datasets tracked by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the most speciose is the Smithsonian Natural History Museum dataset with about 500,000 species represented. Based on the rates of growth in new species on iNaturalist and the relatively large percentages of species we’re still missing for most locations and groups, I expect we will also pass this 500,000 milestone in the next two years or so. But as more and more of the common species are observed, maintaining the growth in new species will rely on adventurous observers and identifiers working together reveal the identity of increasingly rarely encountered and poorly known groups of organisms. If you have other ideas for how to invigorate this process, we’d love to hear them!

Our Observation of the Week is this Collett's Tree Frog (Katak jam pasir in Bahasa), seen in Indonesia by @mahyana\_salim!

Mahyana Salim credits her love of nature to an internship she took in college. “At that time I had the opportunity to do an internship at one of the research stations in the Leuser Ecosystem, namely the Soraya Research Station,” she explains. The station is managed by the Leuser Conservation Forum (FKL), a local NGO. The Leuser ecosystem is a forest in northern Sumatra and is incredibly biodiverse. It contains an especially high number of mammal species, and is the last refuge of some species such as the Sumatran Rhino and the Sumatran Elephant.

While there, Mahyana says 

I encountered things that I had never expected -heard birds singing, saw large trees, saw orangutans, felt the cold edge of a waterfall there, somehow I found peace there. I unconsciously started falling in love with nature. That was my best reason to return a year later to do my final project research there on the Sumatran orangutan population there. Until now, I am still interested in continuing research on Sumatran orangutans in that location as my thesis research.

While following a research transect on Sumatra, Mahyana and her team stumbled across the frog documented in this observation. “[We] tried to document it because this was the first time I saw a frog with a unique pattern similar to the letter X on its back,” she says, and now it’s been identified as Polypedates colletii.

Collett’s Tree Frog occurs in southeast Asia, both on the mainland and on islands like Sumatra and Borneo. It’s mainly arboreal and notably has quite a pointy (aka acute) snout. Like other members of its family (Rhacophoridae), eggs are laid in a mass of foam over water, which dries and hardens. When the eggs hatch, the tadpoles drop into the water below. While listed as Least Concern by the IUCN, habitat loss is a potential threat to this species.

Mahyana (above) joined iNaturalist less than two weeks ago, and has added thirteen observations so far. She says, “I use iNaturalist because this website is one of the websites that can be accessed easily by every single person around the world to get information about biodiversity. In addition, this website also provides a facility to discuss the identification of a particular species. I became more interested in observing the species around me and sharing them.”

Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

- These members of the African frog genus Chiromantis, also in the family Rhacophoridae, create a foam nest. Not all nests in the family are made by more than two frogs.

- The genus Polypedates has a common name of “whipping frogs”, but I couldn’t find an explanation for that name. Anyone know where it comes from?

Our Observation of the Week is this pair of Black-banded snakes (serpiente come ciempiés - Scolecophis atrocinctus), seen in Costa Rica by @elainechernov!

Elaine Chernov, a designer from the Los Angeles area, and herpetologists Erich P Hofmann (@ephofmann, based in North Carolina, US) and Wolfgang Wüster (@wolfgang\_wuster, based in the UK) recently published a Natural History Note in Herpetological Review [PDF] about this observation, which is likely the first documented instance of male-male combat in this species! But according to Elaine, someone else also deserves credit: “My 6 year-old son, Miles, actually deserves some credit. He saw the snakes first!”

Elaine and her two children spend a good amount of time in Costa Rica, as her parents have retired there. “I try to get out into all the beautiful preserved land they have there as much as I can,” she says.

Rincón de la Vieja is the closest volcanic national park to my family's house, so my son and I went for a day trip to hike up to a beautiful waterfall to start off the new year. He was such a trooper—we hiked for 4 hours, and on the way back he spotted these snakes on the ground. I thought maybe they were mating, so I loudly proclaimed, "Aww they are hugging!" to him hoping for limited questions about what they might be doing.

So, she posted the snakes to iNaturalist. Erich P Hofmann, currently a biology instructor at Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina, tells me he has taxon subscriptions “set up for several cryptic, fossorial/semi-fossorial snake species I’m particularly interested in and/or have conducted research on, including Scolecophis and Homoroselaps.” Because these snakes are so small and are often hiding under the leaf litter, they are not often seen (as of now, only thirty-four have been observed on iNat) and “because they are rarely encountered, very little is known about their natural history, and behavioral data is especially lacking.”

Elaine’s observation, then, was intriguing, and soon Erich and Wolfgang (who is based in the UK) began discussing it, as well as sharing it on Facebook. Other herpetologists such as Harry Greene and Gordon Schuett weighed in and suggested it was worth publishing. “Elaine was keen to collaborate on publishing the observation” says Erich, “and she shared with us additional photos and a video of the snakes that she took, which was a phenomenal additional piece–not only an incredibly lucky observation of a rare snake species engaged in a potentially unreported behavior, but one with video that could be further examined!”

Both Erich and Wolfgang tell me that male-male combat is pretty well known among larger snakes such as rattlesnakes and other vipers, as well as long-bodied colubrids like those in the genus Pituophis. Erich explains,

[it’s] generally a kind of wrestling match: in larger-bodied taxa like rattlesnakes (Crotalus), combat consists of two posturing snakes moving and entwining their bodies, raising their heads and anterior trunks, and repeatedly attempting to “pin” the head and neck of the other snake until eventually one concedes. Similarly, in smaller-bodied snakes like coral snakes (Micrurus), two snakes intertwine their bodies, sometimes rolling and spinning around, and again try to gain dominance over their opponent by moving their head and neck above their opponent’s head and neck. However, the lifting of the head and anterior trunk isn’t seen–as we understand it, combat takes place mostly horizontally in smaller snakes. Biting appears to be rare in either case; it is really more of a physical match.

After doing some research, Erich and Wolfgang only found two examples of small colubrid snakes (in the genus Sonora) engaging in male-male combat, so it’s not common, or at least not commonly observed, in small snakes. Elaine’s observation was the first known documentation of such behavior in this species, although the two herpetologists note that because the snakes were not sexed, there’s a possibility the snakes were two different sexes. But in all likelihood both snakes are male, as the behavior hews closely to other documented male-male combat. “It was a really great example of citizen science and social media connecting observations and those able to make the most of them, and adding a little brick to the edifice of our knowledge of the natural world,” says Wolfgang.

Elaine (above, with her children) tells me she shared and discussed her notes, photos, and video with Erich and Wolfgang, then “walked around gloating about being a published scientist to anyone that would listen.” She uses iNaturalist to learn about what she sees, and she’s also helping her daughter (who’s now “obsessed with bugs”) ID her finds. “I'm a single mom with two very young kids and...love using the app to be able to tell them what the thing we saw while out on a hike was called,” she says.

Wolfgang, a snake expert, has contributed nearly 37,000 IDs to iNaturalist, and says he likes using it for several reasons: coming across new locations for the species he studies, honing his ID skills (“with a whole bunch of other highly experienced naturalists on the platform, you are kept on your toes, and you soon relearn humility when you screw up!”), data for niche modeling and just as a social platform.“There are some incredibly knowledgeable and talented people on iNaturalist that don't otherwise use social media,” he says,  

and that I would not have come to interact with without this platform. And also, it's a great bastion of positivity in a social media landscape dominated by politics, news (usually depressing) and discord - we are all here for the same reason, brought together by what unites us rather than by what divides us. That is something to be treasured in these fractious times...While I would advocate a little bit of extra care in managing potential impacts on sensitive species, the overall balance sheet is very much positive!

For his part, Erich notes that platforms like iNat can bring together people from around the world, as the people participating here hail from “California, North Carolina, and the UK, and the observation took place in Costa Rica!

There have been many iNaturalist observations that have ended up published as natural history notes or used in datasets for larger papers, but even seemingly “normal” observations of everyday taxa help to clarify our understanding of the natural world. Many people now have cameras in their pockets, and take pictures just to learn more about a plant or animal; by sharing them to platforms like iNaturalist, these simple pictures can be seen by experts, and may spark discussions, give rise to new hypotheses, or lay the foundation for future studies. Natural history is the foundation of good scientific inquiry in biology, and the collection of natural history data used to be restricted essentially only to scientists in the field. Now, citizen/community scientists are adding important new pieces to the overall puzzle of biodiversity and natural history of organisms on Earth simply by taking photos of things they encounter, and wanting to learn more about them. It all starts with the observers, and I’m very happy that Elaine shared her photo on iNaturalist and was open and excited about publishing the observation!

- Herpetologist @gregpauly noted that the black-banded snake publication “is 1 of 8 that reference iNaturalist observations in this issue of Herpetological Review. Plus, one book review and one research summary also mention iNaturalist. So, 10 different articles referencing iNaturalist in one journal issue!” You can download it by section at https://ssarherps.org/herpetological-review-pdfs/

- Here’s some footage of king cobra males engaging in combat. 

Our Observation of the Week is this Punctured Tiger Beetle (Cicindèle Ponctuée), seen in Canada by @jeongyoo!

“I have loved watching insects since my childhood, fascinated by their near endless diversity,” says Jeong Yoo, a graduate student in entomology. 

Whenever the opportunity provides, I take a hike to small urban parks in my neighborhood, take a sit, and observe and photograph the insects. Though I’m into all insects in general, my favorite is and will always be Chalcid wasps (a group of mostly parasitic wasps). As an avid student of Chalcidoidea systematics, I’ve been working on various Chalcidoidea research projects with Dr. Chris Darling at the Royal Ontario Museum. 

Tiger beetles, Jeong tells me, are among the most difficult insects to photograph (which I can attest to) because they are so fast, so skittish, and have great vision. So he originally thought this one was dead because it kept still as he approached.

So I was very surprised when the beetle flinched as I removed the grass for clear shots! Fortunately, the beetle was kind enough to stay a little longer for me to take a few shots before scurrying off, presumably to sleep somewhere else. I was very lucky to photograph this beautiful beetle.

As you can tell from Jeong’s excellent photos, tiger beetles have some impressive mandibles, which they use to catch, kill, and consume their prey after chasing it down. At least one species has been clocked at running 2.5 meters per second, which is the equivalent of about 125 body lengths per second. And interestingly, they’ll often stop briefly to reorient themselves because they’re not able to process enough visual information at those speeds. This particular species, Jeong tells me, gets its common name from the “green punctures lining the length of its elytra.”

While he’s always enjoyed sharing this photos of insects, Jeong (above) credits Dr. Darling with encouraging him to use iNat. 

I soon realised that iNaturalist is an excellent tool for deepening our knowledge and appreciation for the natural world. Since then, I’ve been vigorously taking and uploading insect photos to my iNaturalist project, hoping for whatever small contributions they would make. I would be happy to see people other than myself stooping down in the park to watch insects.

- The Royal Ontario Museum is one of the organizations managing iNaturalist Canada!

- Nice overview of tiger beetles by Florida Museum PhD student Harlan Gough.

- Roll that beatiful tiger beetle footage!

Thank you for your role in reaching this milestone! Help support iNaturalist as we grow.

DONATE TO CELEBRATE 50M

As of September 20, 2020, iNaturalist has more than 50 million records of wild biodiversity with photos or sounds to allow verification by the community. This year, despite a pandemic and numerous natural disasters, the resilient iNaturalist community continues to forge new connections and discoveries. It has been just 13 months since we passed 25 million observations—continuing iNaturalist’s trend of roughly doubling the number of observations and participants each year since 2012.

Where and what are those 50 million observations? Let’s look at them as dots where each represents 250,000 observations.

Imagine 50 million observations are represented by 200 dots

123 of the 200 dots are of plants and insects. Fish are represented by just 2 dots.

How many dots from each species category?

133 of the 200 dots are from in North America. Africa and South America have the fewest dots.

How many dots are from each continent?

Here's a few more ways to visualize iNaturalist's growth that may be familiar. The graph below shows the number of observations posted each month since iNaturalist was launched in 2008. The site has been roughly doubling each year and there is a pronounced uptick in the northern hemisphere spring and summer. For comparison, it took until November 2014 (or six and a half years) for iNaturalist to reach the first million observations. We broke 3 million observations per month for the first time this year.

Observations Over Time

This map shows the number of observations by country. Just over half of all iNaturalist observations are from the United States.

Observations by Country

iNaturalist is growing differently in different places. In 21 of the top 50 countries with the most observations, the number of observations posted in 2020 is at least double the number posted by this date in 2019. These countries are shown below in descending order. Finland was the fastest growing country this year by this metric. Finland was one of five countries to join the iNaturalist Network of localized iNaturalist portals launched in the last year, along with Ecuador, Australia, Argentina, and Israel. More are in progress.

Where the rate of observations has at least doubled in the last year

In 25 of the top 50 countries, iNaturalist has grown in 2020 compared to 2019, but not quite doubled.

Where the rate of observations has grown but not quite doubled since last year

In 4 of the top 50 countries, fewer observations have been posted in 2020 compared to 2019. All four of these countries had very large City Nature Challenge events in 2019 (notice the peaks around April 2019). The fact that the pandemic made it more difficult to organize in-person events in 2020 probably accounts for the relatively fewer observations this year, even though the baseline of activity throughout the year has increased.

Where the rate of observations has not grown compared to last year

This week on social media we’ll be highlighting observations and stories from each inhabited continent on a different day. You can follow iNaturalist on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

iNaturalist’s Impact

Each of these 50 million observations is an invitation to a conversation about what was seen and its identification. The power of iNaturalist comes from the connections and discussions it enables across borders and levels of professional experience—and the open biodiversity data it creates.

For example, Canadian photographer @pbertner posted photos of of a myco-heterotrophic plant in Peru, which was identified by @kai\_schablewski, a botanist in Germany, as Tiputinia foetida - hundreds of kilometers from its only previously known location in eastern Ecuador. And iNat users in both California and Australia collaborated to identify a mysterious sunfish on the shores of Santa Barbara as Mola tecta - the first documented sighting of this species in the northern hemisphere since the late 1800s! Since then, @lauren99 posted a Mola tecta photo from 2015, taken off of the California coast.

@sultana, whose primary interest is malacology, posted some old photos of a weasel caught in his parents’ bathroom, and the iNat community identified them as the first known photos of a living Colombian weasel - perhaps the rarest South American carnivore. And recently @lcollingsparker posted a cicada observation (from her blueberry bushes), which researchers identified as Okanagana arctostaphylae. It was the first known sighting of this species since it was described in 1915!

And in some cases, iNaturalist observations have even led to the description of entirely new species, like the recently described Phidippus pacosauritus jumping spider, first documented in Paco’s Reserva de Flora y Fauna in Mexico.

Conversations about species identifications are happening all over social media, but iNaturalist captures that dialogue in a structured way that enables searching and reuse that is unique. iNaturalist is rapidly becoming invaluable for biodiversity research through the sheer volume, taxonomic diversity, and geographic range of data enabled by the collective efforts of the global community.

In addition to being explored on and exported from the iNaturalist website, the Research-Grade records are regularly shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). GBIF brings together records from museum specimens as well as many different citizen science and monitoring efforts. Although far from the largest dataset on GBIF, records from the iNaturalist dataset have been cited more than any other—804 times to date!

Beyond the traditional application of occurrence data that captures what, where, and when, a new trend of biodiversity research is beginning based on characters in the photographic evidence.

iNaturalist photos capture the timing of seasonal events (phenology), and studies on organisms as diverse as mountain goats, Yucca flowers, and Alligator lizard mating are using iNaturalist observations to fill major gaps.

Sometimes photos capture more species than originally expected, like pathogens. Two recent studies on flowers and fish both examined observation photos of the host species for evidence of the pathogens, which can considerably expand the availability of distribution information beyond museum specimens and targeted inventories (which cannot be replaced by iNaturalist, but complemented).

iNaturalist has the fuel for countless studies of phenotypic variation at a scale unimaginable before digital cameras and GPS. For example, thousands of observations of the widespread blue dasher dragonfly were used as part of a study of wing color variation and climate across North America by @moore-evo-eco.

...Because we are now accumulating this remarkable collection of time-stamped photographs of every manner of plant, animal, and fungi through iNaturalist and similar platforms, we're potentially going to have a digitized record of how each of these organisms evolve over the next few decades. We'll be able to watch evolution occurring on a grand scale. From a purely academic perspective, it's every evolutionary biologist's dream. —Dr. Michael Moore (@moore-evo-eco)

We weren’t sure what to expect when the global pandemic struck. Many grassroots events that typically attract and orient new participants were canceled. Amazingly, iNaturalist activity didn’t slow down, but continued apace despite the pandemic. Instead of exploring on trips, people are finding new and exciting discoveries in their homes, neighborhoods, and local parks. Many people have shared on the iNaturalist Forum how important iNaturalist has been to them during the pandemic by providing a way for them to explore outdoors, learn about nature, and connect with others in a safe way. Biodiversity is everywhere! We have so much yet to learn. What else will you discover thanks to iNaturalist?

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By Carrie Seltzer, Tony Iwane, Abhas Misraraj, and Scott Loarie

We’ve introduced a new way to use Taxon Splits that gives curators more flexibility. Here’s some background before explaining the change. If this background is already familiar to you jump ahead to the second to last section titled Using the Taxon Split input as the output.

Taxon Swaps
On iNaturalist if you want to change the main scientific name associated with a taxon (e.g. from Species X to Species Y) you do the following steps:

1. Create a new inactive taxon with the name Species Y
2. Create a draft Taxon Swap with Species X as the input and Species Y as the output
3. Commit the Taxon Swap

Why do all this instead of just changing the name on the taxon? Just changing the name would mean that if an identifier typed in an identification of Species X it might unexpectedly change to Species Y without any record of what happened. Create a taxon swap leaves a record so identifiers can see when, how, and why the name associated with their identification changed.

Let’s call this updating identifications. We’re aware that this might not be the easiest, least disruptive way to generate such a log, especially when the name changes are trivial such as going from Cnemaspis hitihami to Cnemaspis hitihamii. But under the current functionality, taxon swaps are always used to change the main scientific name of a taxon.

As shown above, taxon swaps have a single output which means all identifications of the input taxon can be unambiguously updated with identifications of the output taxon. Likewise, other content associated with the input taxon, such as taxon names (where iNaturalist stores common names and synonyms), taxon ranges, listed taxa etc., is moved or copied over to the output taxon*. Committing a taxon swap also makes the input taxon inactive and activates inactive output taxa.

Using Taxon Swaps to Lump Taxa
Another common curation action is to lump one taxon into another (e.g. Species X into Species Z). A taxon swap can also be used to do this by making Species X the input and the already active Species Z as the output. As described above, committing the taxon swap will inactivate Species X, update all identifications, and copy/move other content over to Species Z.

One thing to keep in mind when using Taxon Swaps to lump taxa is that lumping often broadens what we mean by the output taxon. In this example Species Z’s taxon range to the east no longer matches its newly broadened meaning and would need to be manually modified to include the western part of the range. Similarly, imagine Species X’s common name was "Western Critter" and Species Z’s common name was "Eastern Critter". Post-swap, Species’ Z’s common name might need to be updated to something like "Critter".

Several uses for Taxon Merges
If you want to lump two or more taxa (Species X and Species Q) into an existing taxon (Species Z) you can use a Taxon Merge. Taxon Merges work like taxon swaps but have multiple input taxa. Since there’s just a single output taxon, identifications and content are also migrated to the output taxon*.

Taxon Merges can also be used to lump taxa slightly differently. Imagine that rather than manually broadening all the content associated with Species Z you prefer to just make a new taxon for Species Z. Let's call it Species Z’. It would start out inactive, would have the same main scientific name as Species Z, but would have a different broader meaning and thus different broader content such as range maps.

Committing the Taxon Merge would inactivate the input Species Z and activate the broader output Species Z', identifications of Species Z would be updated with identifications of Species Z’ and all other content would be copied to Species Z’.

This approach requires more steps than just manually broadening Species Z (Species Z’ must be created etc.) and perhaps unnecessarily updates all the identifications of Species Z with Species Z` (unnecessary since both taxa have the same the main scientific name). So this way of lumping taxa is generally not preferred, but it is an option available to curators.

Taxon Splits
To carve one taxon off from another (e.g. Species W off from Species X) we use Taxon Splits. Taxon splits have a single input and more than one output. The only way to make taxon splits in the past was to create new inactive taxa for the carved-off taxon (Species W) and for the new narrowed version of the input taxon (Species X’).

Since splits have more than one output taxon, identifications are updated to the common ancestor of the outputs. Other content such as range maps and names are not copied over to the output taxa and must be added manually*.

Atlases provide some flexibility for determining a single output taxon with which to update identifications. Using the example of the atlases below, identifications associated with observations in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA) would be updated with output taxon Species X’ while identifications belonging to observations in Queensland (QLD) would be updated with output taxon Species W. Only identifications belonging to observations within presence places in both atlases (e.g. Northern Territory, NT) or outside of both atlases (e.g. New South Wales) would be updated with the common ancestor.

Using the Taxon Split input as the output
Sometimes only a tiny piece of a taxon is carved off as a new taxon. When the input taxon has a lot of identifications this cran result in many unecessary identification updates (e.g. Species X with Species X’).

We’ve made some changes that allow curators the flexibility, if they choose, to make Taxon Splits where the input taxon is also one of the output taxa. In some ways, this approach is analogous to using a taxon swap to broaden an existing taxon (e.g. Species X) instead of using a taxon merge with a new output taxon (e.g. Species X’) as was described above. In this approach, the input taxon is first manually narrowed by modifying the atlas (as well as other content such as range map, etc.) which will be used to determine the destination of identifications.

Upon committing such a Taxon Split, iNaturalist will not inactivate the input taxon. It will still use the atlases to determine which identifications should be updated with which output taxon, but any identification determined to be updated with the output taxon matching the input (e.g. Species X) will not be touched.

Because doing a split this way won’t update as many identifications (e.g. updating identifications of Species X with identifications of Species X’), it will always be less disruptive. But it’s important to remember to manually narrow the input taxon by updating content such as the taxon range and common names that likely no longer match the narrowed meaning taxon after the split.

There are some advantages from the normal way of splitting taxa such as having the inactivated input taxon (Species X) persist alongside the narrowed taxon (Species X’) coexisting in the database for a more thorough comparison of how the taxon was narrowed. However, as iNaturalist has grown, it is our feeling that the disruptive costs both in terms of processing time and in terms of identification clutter of having so many updated identifications (e.g. Species X to Species X’) now outweighs these advantages, especially when there are a lot of identifications on the input taxon (Species X) that are not destined to be carved off (e.g. as Species W). As long as curators remember to manually narrow content such as taxon ranges, we anticipate that this new way of splitting taxa will generally be the preferred way to split taxa moving forward.

Examples
Here are two examples of this new kind of taxon split I committed. The first involved splitting two Caribbean island endemics (Boa orophias on St. Lucia and, Boa nebulosa on Dominica) off from Boa constrictor. Notice that the same Boa constrictor taxon is listed as both the input and an output.

As expected, this observation from St. Lucia was properly updated to Boa orophias whereas this captive observation outside of all three atlases was updated to Genus Boa. And this observation from within the range of Boa constrictor was untouched.

Similarly, this split involved splitting two species (Varanus tsukamotoi from Guam and other Pacific Islands and Varanus bennetti from several other islands including Palau) off from Varanus indicus. Again note that the same taxon Varanus indicus acts as both input and output.

As expected, this observation from Palau was updated as Varanus bennetti, this observation from Guam was updated as Varanus tsukamotoi, and this observation from Papua was untouched.

Note that in both of these examples, I manually narrowed both the taxon range and atlas of the input taxa before committing the splits.

*The details about which content is copied over and which is moved over to the output taxon when a taxon change is committed is complicated. Here’s an attempt to explain exactly what happens. In both a taxon swap and a taxon merge, taxon photos and taxon names are copied over. The copy of the valid scientific name from the input taxon is invalid (a synonym) on the output taxon. Taxon swaps, but not taxon merges, copy the taxon range, conservation statuses, and atlas from the input (unless a taxon range or atlas or conservation status for the same place already exists on the output taxon). Listed taxa are moved/merged from the input taxon to the output taxon for both taxon swaps and taxon merges. For taxon splits, no content is copied over (since the output taxon is ambiguous). Listed taxa are moved to a single output taxon if atlases can be used to uniquely determine one, much like atlases are used to update identifications.

Our Observation of the Week is this many-legged scene of a huntsman spider and its house centipede prey, seen in Malaysia by @msone!

Dr. Masatoshi Sone is a professor of paleontology at Universiti Malaya, and he describes his field as “about half-geology half-biology, so I do like the taxonomic identification and systematics of life.” While he was a keen naturalist as an undergraduate student, his attention turned toward the “ancient” environment until about two years ago, when insect macro photography reignited his interest in the “modern” environment.  “I soon found iNaturalist introduced by biology students of my current university,” he tells me. “Since then, I carry my camera with a macro lens while I do geology fieldwork in the jungle.”

Masatoshi took his family on a trip to the eastern coast of Peninsular Malaysia during last year’s holiday break, and says “[I] love to go finding insects in the coastal bush at night, because life there is a little different from what I usually see in the Kuala Lumpur area or in the western side of the peninsula.” He came across the spider and centipede while out exploring one night, and says

honestly speaking, my first impression was that the scene was just ‘messy’, as there were so many long, thin appendages lying over the leaf. I soon recognised it was another large arthropod, Prey! but was not sure what it was. After I came back to my room and checked the photos, I even got more shocked and excited. It was a big centipede (with long thin appendages of definitely more than 8), and the prey was even larger than the predator. I've never observed some large Scutigeromorpha (house centipedes), but as they are alive they should usually look even more scary than huntsman spiders. Then, I understand why this dead one looked harmless, and it was perhaps an immature one, still medium-sized.  

Giant huntsman spiders (Genus Heteropoda) are native to Asia and Australia, and as you might surmise they do not spin webs in order to catch their prey. Rather, they stalk and pounce on their prey, then inject it with venom to immobilize it. The Giant Huntsman Spider (Heteropoda maxima), found in Laos, is the largest spider in the world if one is going by legspan - its legspan is about 30 cm (1 ft). 

You’ve probably encountered a house centipede at some point in your life. The most common species, Scutigera coleoptrata, originated in the Mediterranean but can now be found on pretty much every continent besides Antarctica, and they are quite comfortable living indoors. Their stings (centipedes don’t “bite,” venom is injected by modified forelegs) is not considered medically significant to humans. 

Masatoshi (above, looking for dragonflies in Borneo), explains that he initially started using iNaturalist because he respects and agree with the concept of citizen science (“This is perhaps because I am a professional scientist and I know the constraints of ‘professional science’.”), but “purely I enjoy making observations and identifications of what I observe. In principle, I try to participate in and enjoy iNat purely as an amateur naturalist (for biology and ecology, yes I am), separate from my science profession.”

And in that respect, he says that iNaturalist has changed the way he sees and interacts with nature “Definitely and dramatically.” He brings up, this photo of a common tit caterpillar surrounded by asian weaver ants. In the field, he was curious about the interaction and 

Just a few hours after I posted my observation to iNat, my question was solved perfectly with some comments from other like-minded people...as I understand, ants were abducting this poor caterpillar to their nest. iNat is not just the database for making identifications but is the place of having support and exchange of knowledge.

- You can check out Masatoshi's home page here!

- House centipedes have 15 pairs of legs, so there might be up to 38 legs in this observation! 

- Here’s some nice footage of a Giant Huntsman stalking prey in Laos. Unfortunately it’s saddled with overwrought narration, music, and foley effects. But worth watching!

Our Observation of the Week is this Ladybird Spider (Rote Röhrenspinne), seen in Germany by @corinnah!

Corinna Herr is currently a master’s student at the University of Freiburg, and she discovered iNaturalist last year, when someone at the university told her about it while on a trip to Romania. “Since that trip,” she says

I have been using INaturalist to improve my knowledge of species and to help generate knowledge about the distribution of species through my own observations. As often as possible I go outside with my camera to explore nature and upload my findings.

She also shares her photos on Instagram, telling me “I try to inspire people for the world of insects and our other little fellow creatures. I'm not a professional photographer, but I'm trying my best to improve my skills.” So she was very excited to go on a trip with nature photographer Joachim Wimmer to the Kaiserstuhl in southwest Germany, an area of volcanic origin.

On the way…[Joachim] told me that it is possible to see [ladybird spiders] there this day. I had never seen this spider myself before. And actually he was right: we saw two male individuals on our tour through the hilly landscape. Their striking coloring made them easy to spot on the dry ground. I was fascinated by their extraordinary appearance immediately! At first, the individual in the photo was running around but calmed down soon, so that it was possible to photograph it and hold it in my hands.

Ladybird spiders are members of the Ereside, or velvet spider family, and can be found across much of Eurasia. They build tubes of silk in crevices or tree bark, and one female’s tube has been measured at one meter (!) in length. (Miller, et al. 2012) Females lack the red coloration and vivid pattern of the males, and unlike some other species in the family, they do not partake in matriphagy. A study in Spain showed that ants make up a large portion of their diet, and they also enjoy dining on darkling beetles.

Speaking of beetles, Corinna studied ground beetles (Family Carabidae) for her bachelor’s thesis (above is a photo of her using radio telemetry in the Black Forest to study their locomotion patterns), and her master’s thesis focuses on both ground beetles and hymenoptera in grassland habitat. This habitat was recently created as mitigation for the construction of a soccer stadium, and Corinna has been studying the efficacy of soil transfer in bringing along insect species. They’ve found that it’s been successful so far, and she even recorded the first iNat observation of the Notiophilus quadripunctatus ground beetle in Germany. 

Once she graduates, Corinna plans to continue her work in nature and species conservation.

- Here’s a nice videodocumenting a ladybird spider conservationist in the UK, where it was once thought to be extirpated.

- This isn’t the first velvet spider featured as Observation of the Week, check out @vipinbaliga’s Stegodyphus tibialis find from back in 2016!