Our Observation of the Week is this Eastern Glass Frog, seen in Trinidad & Tobago by @zakwildlife!

Last week, after posting the above photo as our Observation of the Day, I saw that it was shared 75 times on Facebook, a significantly higher number than usual, even for a great photo like Zak’s. Scrolling through the shares, there were so many supportive comments from local nature groups, like this:

It was really great to get a glimpse into the naturalist community in the country, so I reached out to Zak get the story behind his observation. 

All of seventeen years of age now, Zak Ali says he first became involved in wildlife conservation at age eight, and credits his family camping trips into the primary forests of Trinidad for sparking his interest in nature, as well as wildlife books and Steve Irwin’s documentaries. He began by “training raptors that can't be released to become educational ambassadors.

I first started as an avid birder (mostly raptors) but currently at the age of seventeen, I have interests in everything from Reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Other than the scientific aspect, I also love the wildlife photography aspect of it. My passion for wildlife drives me to protect and conserve, to learn and understand.

Zak and some of his colleagues recently traveled to Trinidad’s sister island, Tobago, which has endemic reptile and amphibian species. After sailing over, they journeyed to the Main Ridge Reserve to explore. 

The first night we encountered a crab-eating raccoon hunting on a river bank, unbothered by our presence, [and] I saw the glass frogs that night (Hyalinobatrachium orientale) and took a few images but wasn't pleased with them. The next night, with no reptiles in sight, I searched for the glass frogs and I noticed this glass frog sitting on a clutch of eggs, I had to photograph it!! (from my observation on site, the most mature set of eggs was guarded the best). The father guards the eggs from wasps, snakes and other predators, occasionally kicking off wasps that land on eggs. This was my second encounter with the Tobago glass frog, one I will not forget.

Eastern glass frogs are found on Tobago and parts of eastern Venezuela, and belong to the family Centrolenidae. Glass frogs get their name from the skin on their abdomen (ventral side) and legs, which is translucent in some species, making their internal organs visible. Mainly arboreal, these frogs lay clutches of eggs on the undersides of leaves overhanging streams. When the tadpoles are ready (or when disturbed) they’ll leave their eggs and drop into the water below. It is believed male eastern glass frogs cover egg clutches to not only protect them from predators, but to prevent fungal growth, infection, and desiccation.

Zak (above) says he uses iNat to record this observations and to scout out biodiversity and geographic distribution in an area. He and other naturalists also used iNat to record findings for last year’s Tabaquite Bioblitz, and Zak is also a co-founder of West Indian Herping, a group dedicated to educating people about reptiles, amphibians, and other wildlife of the region. “For a small twin island nation,” he says, “Trinidad and Tobago has a lot to offer, it has a very wide array of biodiversity...iNaturalist has made it easier to get locals interested in recording observations and getting involved.”

- iNat user @raindernd’s observation of a Stygian Owl back in 2018 was a first for Trinidad and Tobago! Check out the article here and a great video from Chaguanas Public Library about it here.

- @ldempewolf’s observation of a Microceris dulcinea butterfly also represents a first for this species in Trinidad and Tobago! Paper here. 

Our Observation of the Week is this Variable Bushy Feather Star, seen in the Federated States of Micronesia by @marlinleeling!

Born and Raised in Micronesia, Marlin Lee Ling says his father Dana (@danaleeling) “would take us (my two sisters and I) on Frizzles;

basically adventures into the forest to see rivers and waterfalls and other cool stuff. We called them Frizzles because of the Ms. Frizzle Magic School Bus books. My dad teaches Ethnobotany at the College of Micronesia and so on these Frizzle's he would name pretty much every plant in the forest, he could name the scientific name, the English name, and even the name in the 4 main local languages (Pohnpeian, Kosraen, Yapese, and Chuukese)  if that plant had one.

Two years ago, Marlin began studying marine science at the College of Micronesia, got his SCUBA certification, “and from there my interest in the ocean grew.” This summer, Marlin is interning with the Conservation Society of Pohnpei, an NGO protecting the island’s natural resources and habitats. He’s helped conduct coral reef monitoring surveys, and saw the feather star at Pehleng Pass, one of 25 sites being studied. “The channel was full of life from dolphins, to manta rays, to turtles, and the walls were incredible,” Marlin says, “it was like swimming through an underwater canyon.  On that day I also got my first observation of a turtle, something I've always wanted to have.”

While they are echinoderms, feathers stars are unlike the more familiar sea stars in many ways. For one, they are mainly sessile - attaching themselves to a substrate and using their arms to feed on bits of plankton and detritus. They start out with five arms, but those divide into other arms. If an arm is broken, at least two will grow in its place. 

“My dad was the one who introduced me to iNaturalist,” says Marlin (above). “He is a huge fan of the app. He calls it his ‘game’, like candy crush or solitaire, [and] he can spend whole hours sifting through observations of plants and identifying them. 

He began using it in his Ethnobotany class to help the students learn the names of plants. I realized I could do the same thing but for marine life. It's been really helpful for learning the name of fish and corals. For example if I saw a parrotfish, I'd snap a pic and upload it to iNaturalist, it would get identified as a Bleeker's Parrotfish (Chlorurus bleekeri) and so the next time we'd go out diving and saw one I'd be like “Oh, that's a Bleeker's Parrotfish.”. With iNaturalist I'm able to better identify things because a lot of the time ID books use picture perfect photos and when you see the things in the water they don't look exactly like they do in the books, and so over time I learn what certain things actually look like underwater and when I see them I know exactly what they are.

Photo of Marlin was taken by Shanalin Lee Ling, Marlin's sister.

- Feather Stars usually stay in one spot, but they can swim, and when they do so it’s pretty great.

- There are over 1,700 feather star observations on iNaturalist, check them out!

Our Observations of the Week are these Okanagana arctostaphylae cicadas, the first documented in over 100 years! Seen in the United States by @lcollingsparker and @easmeds.

[As the hoodwinker mola observations showed, one of the coolest things about iNaturalist is how it can bring people of all interests and experience levels together, and here’s another cool example. I apologize for the tardiness of this post, but it took some time to synthesize everything.]

Lucinda Collings Parker (@lcollingsparker, photo below) tells me “I spent my early life and the past 20+ years living in the country and mountains, which I love, but never really paid attention to the individual plants, animals, insects, or fungi.” After retiring two years ago, she took an iNaturalist class run by UC Davis and the American River Conservancy and credits iNat, along with nature journaling, “[as playing] a big part in learning to really look. My current aim is to get familiar with what lives in my part of California, first focusing on my own property. I’m still just a beginner.”

Last month, while out picking blueberries in her garden (a garden surrounded by many wild plants, including manzanita), Lucinda found the cicada you see above in the shade cloth draped over her blueberry bushes. She posted her photo to iNaturalist, where Will Chatfield-Taylor (@willc-t) identified it as the first documented observation of Okanagana arctostaphylae since 1915. “It was exciting to see how quickly the researchers responded and how more sightings were quickly made,” she says, “and since I mainly use iNaturalist to learn about what I’m seeing, it was fun to be able to give back, however accidentally, with a helpful observation.”

Will is collaborating with Jeff Cole of Pasadena City College (@bugsoundsjc) and Elliott Smeds (@easmeds), a Master’s student at Sonoma State University, and they’re “currently working to create a complete molecular phylogeny of the 57-species genus [Okanagana] and numerous species that will need to be described,” he tells me. 

iNaturalist has become a critical way for us to obtain specimens that we would be unlikely to ever collect. You can see the full list of contributions on the Okanagana Citizen Science Project I created on iNaturalist. It's become so important that we are actually considering writing it into a grant as a citizen science aspect to reimburse costs for shipping specimens from people.

Because no one had seen this cicada in over a century, Elliott (below) says “all of us were understandably freaking out a little bit. I live a couple of hours away from the area, so I ended up being the one to go look.

I got into cicadas largely thanks to iNaturalist. I had just received my degree in Biology and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. And meanwhile I had begun looking at local cicada observations on iNat and very quickly realized that there was a staggering diversity of species right in my backyard. At that point there were no active iNat users with expertise in Western North American cicadas, so the identifications were often either very broad or completely inaccurate. So I dug into the literature and started cleaning things up. I created a project called Cicadas of the Western US to keep track of all the observations people post. It became clear that there is precious little known about these Western taxa, and I decided I wanted to help fill that gap.  

Alas, his first day on the hunt was unsuccessful, and as not much is known about this species Elliott had no idea if he would find any at all. But while driving back from the field,he heard a call very similar to its likely closest relative, Okanagana opacipennis, and “got chills.” He returned the following day, received permission to search a stand of manzanitas from the property owner, and found them (*photo below).

“Cicada biology is not a large or glamorous field,” says Elliott. 

Collecting this species and including it in our research was going to be big news for maybe fifteen people on the entire planet. But finding that beautiful insect, camouflaged so perfectly against the smooth red bark, and knowing that I’m the first scientist in 100 years to see this creature—that’s a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Elliott heard quite a few more individuals in the area, and two more independent observations of Okanagana arctostaphylae have been posted since. So, “as for why it took so long for anyone to find it, the main answer seems to be that no one was looking particularly hard...the population is not small by any means,” he surmises. But now that they know where to look, this species can be monitored over time.

“I currently have 4 different people actively collecting cicadas for us,” says Will. “One in Utah, one in New Mexico, and two in Eugene, Oregon. @birdernaturalist (Rich Hoyer) possibly re-found a species called O. sequioae, which was last seen in 1964 when it was described.” Another quite rare cicada was found in Ontario, Canada by an iNat user and @silversea\_starsong (more on him below) contacted a friend and a specimen is on its way as well.

“iNaturalist has been an invaluable research tool, but just as importantly it has made me more curious about organisms that I might have overlooked previously,” Elliott says. “It is now almost effortless to snap a few photos of a plant and have an expert tell me what it is, and going forward I will have that knowledge filed away in my head for the next time I encounter it. I am a better biologist thanks to the iNaturalist community.”

Bonus Content!

This is not the only manzanita-loving cicada in California that has recently been photographed on iNaturalist. @silversea\_starsong and @ronvanderhoff posted the first known photographs of living Okanagana opacipennis last year. Unlike most members of the genus, these two species do not have transparent wings. And as Elliott mentioned above, the two have a similar call. James explains, 

I've been hearing the song of "opacipennis" in that part of the state, and when I was out with Jeff and Will, we also heard this song and were puzzled by it. It's fitting that this song turned out to be arctostaphylae -- the two manzanita species are closely related in habits, appearance, and genetically, so the shared song makes sense. That song type is quite distinct to all the other Okanagana.

James, who has currently observed the most species of anyone on iNat, visited the Bay Area last summer and was kind enough to talk with me on camera about the cicada find, as well as iNat in general. Here’s the cicada part of our discussion, I’ll post a longer video soon (hopefully!).

* This photo is taken from another observation made later on the same day, to give a clearer view of the bug. :-)

Our Observation of the Week is this Porpolomopsis lewelliniae mushroom, seen in Australia by @franklinhermit!

“I often warn people that if you see a pretty mushroom be careful, because you may develop symptoms of a lifelong disease called Mushroom Madness/ aka Fungi Fever!" says Heather Elson (aka franklinhermit). “I’ve seen it happen to literally hundreds of people over the years, who start out only wanting to know if they can eat them, but on learning more about them, then finding a new appreciation for them in their role in ecosystems and their stunning beauty. It is great to see a growing interest in fungi around the world in more recent years.”

Heather has been photographing and studying fungi for about 15 years, and this year is working with Dr. Genevieve Gates from the University of Tasmania, 

[who] has kindly offered to mentor me to learn to identify fungi through microscopic characters so that I may be able to further identify the fungi that I find and perhaps one day I may be able to further contribute to science by describing new species...Compared to plants and animals, we really know so little about fungi. For example, in Australia alone, it is estimated that only 5% of around 250,000 species of fungi have been formally described.

Heather resides in a tall, wet eucalypt forest in far south Tasmania, and that’s where she found the fungus you see above. “[It’s] one of many found on the property over the years, she says,

Tasmania's Gondwanan heritage and diverse ecosystems carved from climatic, physical and biological impacts has created unique habitats with equally unique fungi. I have been recording observations of fungi on the property with the aim of providing this data to Fungimap for their research, policy and conservation.

Found in eastern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, Porpolomopsis lewelliniae is a small (its cap measures about 3-6.5 cm) common mushroom that often grows in leaf litter during fall and winter. While there are other pink mushrooms about, this one’s cap splits right down the gills as it grows.

Heather (above), tells me she uses iNaturalist “to support the work of Fungimap - an Australian non-profit organisation who raise awareness, educate and advocate around the important role fungi play in our environment.” After ten years of observing fungi, she’s happy to have found a platform where she can finally share her archive of observations.

I have begun entering years of these fungi observations to the iNaturalist Fungimap Project, so that I can ensure these observations are of some value to the scientific and general community rather than sitting on my computer! Uploading to iNaturalist also provides the added bonus of serving as an online backup of these images and information so that they do not get lost in the event of a digital disaster at home which is also one less thing for me to worry about! I really encourage others to use iNaturalist so that their sightings can reach a broader audience and help science.

- You can check out Heather’s website here, and the Tasmanian Fungi Facebook group, which she admins, here.

- I interviewed iNat user and mycologist @leptonia a few years ago, and he has some tips for finding and photographing mushrooms in this video.

Our Observation of the Week is this pair of griffon vultures - Rüppell's on the left and white-backed on the right - seen in Kenya by @rujutavinod!

A resident of Pune, just east of the Western Ghats range (also known as the Sahyadri mountains), Rujuta Vinod recalls first becoming seriously interested in nature in the 1980s, when local environmentalists began raising awareness about the ecological issues of the mountain range - one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. “Thereafter,” she says, “I kept a track of news about continued devastation of nature-wilderness-wildlife in India, with lot of concern.”

By the mid-nineties, she started visiting local natural areas, such as the wetlands in her district, and tells me “I got terribly fascinated by the winter migratory birds. WWF India, Pune division was the organization, which conducted field trips and weekly free classes, where renowned naturalists presented their work and expressed concern over the rapidly declining number of wildlife species in India.” However, balancing work responsibilities (she practiced anesthesiology and psychotherapy), parenting (she was raising two sons) made wildlife study and documentation difficult. And by the year 2000 or so she was discouraged by her “inability to stop the speed and extent of loss of wildlife,” so she stopped her field visits.

But in 2013, after retiring from her position as a psychotherapist, Rujuta says 

[I] restarted pursuing my real passion of documenting wildlife. I now started using cameras. Side by side, I started learning and then contributing in eco-restoration. I got my life back when I saw forests and wetlands and grasslands and deserts and saw the wildlife again with my own eyes and captured the species in my camera. The whole experience was of “healing from within” as my practice had drained my energy.

She started uploading her observations to the India Biodiversity Portal (7,500 so far), eBird, and more recently iNaturalist. Then, last June, after years of watching documentaries about the great migrations in Africa, a dream came true for Rujuta when she visited the Maasai Mara in Kenya.

The vultures you see above were photographed after she and her tour group watched spotted hyenas drive away two lionesses from a wildebeest carcass.  

We saw Black-backed Jackals, many species of vultures (Lappet-faced, Rüppell's Griffon and, African White-backed), Marabou stork, and of course a clan of Spotted Hyenas around that carcass. [The] Hyenas were so hungry that the whole time they claimed the meat and crushed the bones (I still remember the sound), they did not allow anybody to come closer.

However, the jackals and Marabou stork were sneaky and snatched the meat while the hyenas were busy pulling the parts of that carcass. Vultures continued to stand at the periphery and tried to get a few pieces whenever the road was clear for them. I saw those wonderful vultures for the first time and liked the design on the feathers of Rüppell's Griffon and the head & face of Lappet. This shot was the only one I got with good clarity of the animal in the focus.

A very large bird, with a wingspan of about 2.26 to 2.6 meters (7.4 to 8.5 ft), Rüppell's griffons are thought to fly at a higher altitude than any other bird, as evidenced by one colliding with a plane flying at about 11,300 meters (37,000 ft). They’re known to often soar at at 6,000 meters (20,000 ft) and use vision only to spot their next meal. According to the IUCN, the wild population of Rüppell's griffons is about 22,000, and their main threats are habitat loss, hunting, and poisoning. White-backed vultures aren’t as large or known to fly as high as the Rüppell‘s griffons, but they are unfortunately vulnerable to the same threats, and their population is in decline as well.

Rujuta (above, in the Maasai Mara) uses iNaturalist to create an electronic public biodiversity record, “and to help indirectly the forest department and biodiversity officials to protect the habitats, critically endangered and endemic wildlife.”

[The] more I work on this portal with my heightened enthusiasm, my feeling of hope replaces my frustration. I get a good peaceful sleep at night.

I have joined many projects on iNaturalist, which has a worldwide database. I see wonderful high resolution Macro images uploaded by people around the world. I get inspired by those who have identified thousands of images and those, who have uploaded hundreds of thousands of observations. When I see a record of a single species in many thousands – I feel amazed at the hours and energy spent by those individuals.

- Sir David Attenborough shows us how Rüppell's griffons use warm air to take flight.

- This short piece in The Hindu reflects on the Save the Western Ghats march of 1987.

Hey all, just wanted to let you know about two recent changes. First, we've removed the "Agree?" buttons on the website when 1) the observation is Research Grade and 2) the identification you're agreeing with isn't "leading." We did this to discourage people from adding redundant identifications to observations that don't need them, i.e. observations that no longer "need IDs" because there's already a community consensus at the species level. I suspect most people add IDs like this because they're fixated on increasing their identifications count. To be clear, the point of adding identifications is not to make a little number increase. It's to help people first, and to improve the accuracy and precision of the taxon associated with each observation second. And yes, I'm well aware that the identifications "leaderboards" might be the biggest factor motivating people to behave like this, but fixing that is a bit more challenging (it will require taking the site down for an evening, at least; I'd prefer to just remove them, but I'm guessing that would not go over well). And also yes, I'm aware some people do this "defensively" to prevent people from shifting the Community Taxon in the future, and still other people add IDs like this because they rely on the system recognizing their ID when extracting data from iNat. That's why we didn't make adding these kinds of IDs impossible, but things are a little harder for you now. It's a tradeoff. I'm hoping this change will also reduce the amount of "thank you" IDs people add. It's great to express gratitude, but a nice comment is a better option than an ID. Anyway, if you're not seeing an "Agree?" button where you were expecting one, this is why.

The other change is the new support for Markdown in comments and IDs and the formatting buttons. For those not familiar with Markdown, it's a more convenient formatting scheme than HTML that builds on how you may already express things like emphasis in plain text. You can use the buttons that now display when you add comments and IDs on the website to see how this formatting works, but here's on overview:

* an
* unordered
* list

1. an
1. ordered
1. list

> block quoted text is a nice way
>
> to quote external sources
        

But wait, there's more!

|this|is|
|-|-|
|a|table|

We're supporting most of basic Markdown formatting, plus the tables extension, even though we don't have buttons for all those things.

It's also worth noting that we're supporting Markdown on comments, identifications, journal posts, and mostly on user profiles and project descriptions (you may run into trouble if that text is being truncated as it is on the project detail page). We're also supporting Markdown in the mobile apps for comments and IDs right now, even though we don't have the formatting buttons there. Mobile support for Markdown in user profiles, project descriptions, and journal posts is a work in progress (bold, italic, and links work fine, lists and tables not quite). We're still supporting HTML like we used to, but we're parsing it a bit more striclty than we used to. There are also a few weird cases where past text may now be formatted incorrectly, e.g. if you (like me) were in the habit of listing traces through keys like this,

1. Hairy patella
4. Red tail
18. Falcate toes

you'll need to switch to something like

1\. Hairy patella
4\. Red tail
18\. Falcate toes

Finally, thanks to everyone who chimed in on the Forum about this. Also, huge kudos to todtb for contributing the keyboard shortcuts for the text editor and for adding it to Identify (he's also working on making the text editor available when editing comments and identification remarks). He just volunteered to do both and did a great job, so thank you!

[Last month, a few weeks after iNaturalist released its Black Lives Matter statement, we received an email from Camisha Butler, (@camcamcam, below) a Black iNat user who hails from the Atlanta area in the United States. Camisha wrote about her lifelong relationship with nature, her use of iNat for her Plant Life Project, and some of the experiences she’s had being Black while out in nature. She said she’d be happy to share her story, so we exchanged a few emails and I used her responses for what follows. - Tony]

While Camisha Butler grew up in the city (Atlanta’s West End, to be exact), she spent many of her childhood summers about one and half hours away in Hancock County, with her grandmother and her cousins. “[My grandmother’s house] was surrounded by a large field and I often spent my time running around barefoot and climbing trees,” she recalls. “I still love walking around barefoot in the summer and feeling my toes dig into the grass and moist soil.” And at around the age of twelve she and her family would join her brother’s Boy Scout activities, like hiking and camping, “and that is when I first became excited about being outdoors and realizing that it was an interest and lifestyle.”

However, Camisha has had negative experiences while out exploring, and in her experience this is often due to the misconception that Black people don’t enjoy the outdoors. She’s been told “I didn't know black people camped,” by an acquaintance, and says

I have experienced curious stares from whole families on hikes and even at the showers while camping, [and] although it's not particularly harmful behaviour, it feels restrictive and that makes me feel uncomfortable, as if I'm not entitled to enjoy a mountainside or gaze out on a rushing creek in peace...In my adult years, I have found a community of black women and men who hike regularly and we often share different trails or pictures from our hikes. I think it's important to have representation everywhere as no race is a cultural monolith and nature belongs to the Earth, which means it belongs to everyone. 

About nine years ago, Camisha learned that her great-great-grandmother, Susie Reaves, was both a midwife (“she personally delivered over 200 children in her lifetime”) and someone who treated others with medicinal herbs. “She would prepare various teas, tinctures and salves which she also kept in her home for her family and patients,” says Camisha. 

This really inspired me. Although I loved being outdoors and being amongst the trees and other greenery, it struck me that I did not know anything about them, I didn’t even know their names. I desired to grow an understanding of the plants around me, not so much for medicinal purposes, but just because I felt it my birthright and responsibility to develop a knowledge of greenery around me so that I can continue our family relation to Mother Earth.

“I’m a serial collector. I collect records, concert ticket stubs, museum pencils and I've even had a paper bag collection,” Camisha explains, “[so] around 2012, I thought I would begin ‘collecting’ plants. Not physically, but through identifying plants around me through photography, and that was the birth of The Plant Life Project.” So she started identifying and learning about the naturally occurring plants she encountered, particularly weeds. Her favorite is the American trumpet vine (above), which is native to eastern North America. 

Last summer, I first saw the trumpet vine on the side of the highway and I became obsessed. I happened to find some growing off an old building in the city and I stretched my arm AND camera zoom to capture a pic so I could learn its name. I’m happy to say that just yesterday, I spotted some vines growing over a very accessible bridge up the street from my house. I went home, dressed properly in my boots, sweats, long sleeves and gloves and I came back and down around the bridge to get my first up close picture. They are so beautiful in color and shape, they appear melodic, the name is quite fitting. It was the highlight of my weekend.

After years of using various resources for identification, Camisha started on iNat in 2018, and appreciates the computer vision suggestions and the corrections, as well as helpful comments from other users. Her goal is to have at least 150 observations by year’s end, with the majority being research grade. She’ll also break out the iNat app while shopping for house plants to get some care tips and information. “The iNat community,” she says, 

is super inclusive and diverse in cultures and interests. It's exciting finding iNat users near and far. There's a comfort in the diversity on the platform because it shows that we're together in our common love of nature. There are biologists, nature photographers and observers from around the world with varied reasons for using iNat, some love plants like me and some enjoy fauna. The community really provides a well rounded view that anyone can be a naturalist. And because IDs are crowdsourced, you have an opportunity to interact with many knowledgeable people from anywhere.

- You can follow Camisha and her #PlantLifeProject on Instagram at nutellabrownbaby.

- Coincidentally, it happens to be #BlackBotanistsWeek! Follow the hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.

Our Observation of the Week is this Aquilegia buergeriana var. buergeriana flower, seen in Japan by @skycat!

[skycat doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Japanese, so both of us relied on Google Translate here. I’ve cleaned up Google Translate’s version of  skycat’s responses, hopefully not too much was lost in translation in either direction.]

“I've always loved living things since I was a kid, and I used to collect beautiful flowering plants from nearby mountains and grow them at home,” recalls skycat. That passion continued into adulthood, and they’ve been gardening for quite some time now. 

After years of looking at plants that have been bred to be pretty, skycat now wants to show off the beauty of wild plants as well, and has been photographing plants unique to Japan, hoping to one day see them become as popular as the standard garden plants from the country, such as the Golden-rayed Lily (ヤマユリ) and the Japanese Camellia (ヤブツバキ).

One such plant is the native Aquilegia buergeriana, which skycat says is widely distributed in Japan’s mountainous regions. Many members of this species have red sepals, but skycat says in the Tokai region, where they reside, the flowers have whitish-yellow sepals. 

The genus Aquilegia, known in English as “columbines”, contains around 70 species and is native to the northern hemisphere, especially in areas of higher elevation. The flowers of this genus are striking, with five sepals and five petals. The petals have five nectar spurs reaching past the back of the flower, giving the columbine flowers a distinctive look.

skycat tells me they use iNaturalist as a record of “my own images taken in the past. 

I like the fact that I can easily retrieve past images...I take photos so that other people could understand not only the flowers of the plant, but also the leaves, the overall appearance, and the way it appears in its habitat. As I have used iNaturalist, I’ve begun to carefully observe even smaller flowering plants that I had not noticed before.

- by Tony Iwane

- The U.S. Forest Service has a thorough article about the co-evolution of North American columbine flowers and their pollinators (primarily hawk moths and humming birds in North America).

- Differences in columbine nectar spur length are due not to the number of cells in the spur, but to the elongation of those cells.

Our Observation of the Week is the first Nesterov’s Desert Monitor posted to iNat, seen in Iraq by @soran4!

“I grew up in a small village in the Kurdistan region of Iraq so I have great contact with nature,” says Soran Ahmed, who is currently a Masters of Science student in entomology at the University of Sulaimani. “I have a huge interest in studying biodiversity of Iraq, mainly insect diversity but I also love identifying any animals I find in our nature, and conserving threatened animals. I usually go to the field at least once a week to find animal diversity in our region.”

Soran found the monitor lizard you see above near a water source (see video here), and tells me they’re at risk of being killed by humans due to a misunderstanding about their behavior. The lizard’s local common name translates roughly as “goat sucker” and people in the area mistakenly believe they bite the teats of goats and sheep, and will thus sometimes dispatch them.

This monitor species was described in 2015 by Wolfgang Böhme, et al. A specimen was actually collected in 1914 by Russian herpetologist P.V. Nesterov, who “had intended to include them as a new Varanus species in his long manuscript on the reptiles of Kurdistan,” but he was not able to finish his work due to the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. A closer look at these once forgotten specimens, along with a recent photo of the lizard in the field by Willi Schneider, led to further study and finally a description of the species. Although little is known about these lizards, they are believed to range only in “the western and southwestern margin of the Zagros Mountain range on both sides of the Iraqi/Iranian border and down to the area of Shiraz, Fars Province, Iran.”

Soran (above) says “since we do not have sufficient sources for identification, using iNaturalist indeed helps me for identification purposes; it is really helpful. It’s also a perfect gate for sharing our diversity with other peoples around the world.”

- by Tony Iwane. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

- Take a look at Soran’s YouTube channel, and he also has an Instagram account here. 

- There are over 7,500 monitor observations on iNat, check them out!

- Another reptile in the region, the spider-tailed horned viper, was also only recently described after a specimen was collected decades ago. It was the subject of an Observation of the Week post back in 2016.

Our Observation of the Week is this Long-tailed Giant Ichneumonid Wasp (Megarhyssa macrurus), seen in the United States by @cholmesphoto!

“I became interested in Megarhyssa a number of years ago when I stumbled across a congregation of males of M. macrurus and M. greenei on a log waiting to mate with emerging females,” recalls New York based photographer Clarence Holmes. “I was able to capture photos of the males, but one of my macro targets since then has been to capture photos of a female (particularly M. macrurus ovipositing). I have had limited opportunities until recently.”

That changed, however, on a recent trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas this spring. On his first visit to the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA) he found an ovipositing female but couldn’t get a good angle on it.  “At the time I added it to my long mental list of missed opportunities and moved on...

The next day I returned to investigate a few different trails, and while walking one of them stopped to take in a view along a creek.  I detected motion to my right and there I saw three female M. macrurus all ovipositing on the same tree!  I took time to observe their behavior and was able to capture my long desired photo of the female ovipositing.

Take a look at Clarence’s photo and you’ll see the remarkable mechanism this insect uses to get her young off to a good start. Megarhyssa wasps, also known as “stump stabbers”, are able to detect their hosts (the wood-boring larvae of Tremex columba sawflies) then drill into the wood using their incredible long ovipositors (this can take 40 minutes!). The translucent blue membrane you see at the base of the ovipositor pushes it into the wood as the tip cuts. Once the host is found, it is stung and paralyzed, then the egg is laid. The wasp larva will consume the paralyzed host then pupate in the burrow before emerging. 

Growing up in the US state of Ohio, Clarence (above) tells me he’s always been interested in nature, and observed the various birds, insects and plants in his backyard and beyond. “I started doing macro photography of insects in my teens and it has been a constant throughout my life,” he says. “I have expanded my observation of nature as a birder, and recently have taken an interest in fungi and lichens. I license many of my photos of the natural world for various uses including print publications and for use on the web.”

He joined iNat in late 2018 and started uploading his photos and making IDs in 2019. He first tries to use resources like field guides and BugGuide, but says iNats help if he’s stumped (no pun intended).

My primary interest is insects and spiders, but I have also posted observations of anything in nature that I have been able to capture photos of. I spend a lot of time out in the field hoping to discover, observe, capture (photos), and learn about insects and any other aspects of nature that I encounter. iNaturalist has added to these activities by helping me see what others are seeing in my area, by helping me identify what I see, and by allowing me to improve my identification skills in many taxons.

- by Tony Iwane

- You can check out Clarence’s photos here, he’s got quite a diverse portfolio.

- This page goes into the Megarhyssa oviposition process in some detail and includes video. Pretty sweet!

- This is not the first Observation of the Week from LLELA - take a trip with us down memory lane back to December of 2015!