kimberlietx's Journal

Last year I spent some time trying to identify a three-banded leafhopper, which led me to comparing a lot of images of Erythroneura spp on BugGuide. Yesterday I was tagged on one and it got me looking at them again. I thought if I put some images together it might help me (and possibly others) to get to the right species a little easier.

(All the usual disclaimers go with this post. I'm not an expert, just an avid researcher when something interests me. Any species will have variations. This post is not exclusive of any other similar looking species, but I'll try to add them as they come up. You should not rely solely on this post for ID; BugGuide is still the best layperson resource. Consumption may cause stomach upset and/or a laxative effect. Offer valid only at participating locations.)

It's helpful to note that the background yellow stripes can also be red/orange, but the pattern of the brown bands is the first place to start.

Erythroneura calycula (Three-banded Leafhopper)
The first band is thinly U-shaped, covering primarily the eyes. All bands are brown.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/267669/bgimage

Erythroneura cymbium
The first band looks squared or like a barbell more than U-shaped. All bands are brown.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/702934/bgimage

Erythroneura tricincta (Three-banded Leafhopper)
The first band is wide and covers almost the entire pronotum. All bands are brown. Note the same common name as E. calycula.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/18115/bgimage

Erythroneura bistrata
The first band is wide and comes to an angle at the legs. (This is a key feature to differentiate bistrata and tricincta. The distal (bottom) edge of the 1st band curves forward in bistrata creating the angle, and backward in tricincta.) The second band is usually irregular or mask shaped instead of straight lines. The bands often have red coloration too.

BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/228988/bgimage

Erythroneura vitis (Grapevine Leafhopper)
This species has very distinct marks that look like a white circle with a red outline on a brown body. The white bands will be thinner, all edged in red, and the 2nd brown band will be rounded not mask shaped.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/36023/bgimage

Erythroneura diva
The 1st band is brown with red overlaying it. The 2nd is red with brown only on the sides.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/287060/bgpage

Erythroneura integra
The 2nd band is brown with red overlaying it and slightly lower.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/540391/bgimage

Eratoneura arpegia, amethica OR trivittata
The head has no brown band on it. The 1st band curves forward like Erythroneura bistrata, but the 2nd band is brown on the sides and red in the middle. The 3rd band is brown, or red with a brown dot. Note that this is a different genus than the other examples. The species are currently combined on BugGuide into a complex and not in separate species.
BG images: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1485152/bgpage

If you have input on corrections, please comment or message me! These are grossly simplified descriptions for quick ID, but please consult BugGuide for full descriptions and details.

For other genera with similarities, also review
Eratoneura sp https://bugguide.net/node/view/512271
Empoa sp https://bugguide.net/node/view/1492584
Ossiannilssonola sp https://bugguide.net/node/view/723009

Additional resources:
Many Erythroneura have subspecies where one of them will have the three-banded look. Ex: E. rosa var repetita. It's worthwhile reviewing the images at https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Review-of-the-New-World-Erythroneurini-(Hemiptera%3A-Dmitriev-Dietrich/5617d15be17a0ce795c9bb28c50ecf3bb3f21fe7

Photo credits:
E. calycula - John Boback; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7126938
E. cymbium - Kimberlie Sasan; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7290394
E. tricincta - Royal Tyler; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14321359
E. bistrata- Ken-ichi Ueda; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7678269
E. vitis - Timothy Reichard; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14737151
E. diva - Timothy Reichard; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14736007
E. integra - Timothy Reichard; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14816644
E. arpegia/amethica/trivittata complex - Lee Elliott; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1812292

The competition still has just over 24 hours to go, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts since I'm done uploading...

At the moment, I have uploaded 1371 observations of 532 species.

My personal goal for the competition was to make 1000 observations of as many different species as I could find. (I never did find that darn squirrel! I swear they go into hiding during the CNC!) I'm thrilled to have achieved my personal goal!

Last year I made 757 observations of 437 species. Definite improvement!
And I'm anxious to see the final results on Monday.

Some thoughts about the things that I saw or experienced during the challenge that aren't represented in the photos:

• Since I could not drive very far, I did all of my observations within 10 miles of my home at various parks and fields that I frequent. It helped to know what species were already there, and where I could find some species I had not already photographed.
• I moth'ed in my backyard every night. It was one of the best turn-outs I've had in a while! Lots of larger moths, and several new species for my yard.
• I photographed more grasses and sedges than I've ever done before. I won't remember any of them next week, but if I just keep doing that it will eventually sink in.
• I also photographed a LOT of plant galls. (Those balls that insects make on plants/trees.) Their variety of shapes fascinate me!
• My most photographed species (11 times) was of the Venus' Looking-Glass Flower (Triodanis biflora)
• I had no idea the Brown Thrasher (bird) could sing! I heard him before I saw him and I was mesmerized!
• I found 2 live caterpillars in the bluebird nestboxes after the young had fledged. I don't know if they were looking for somewhere to pupate, or if they just got lucky and avoided being lunch. 1 was interesting. 2 is curious...
• I waited 30 minutes to catch a hummingbird, but they were zipping all over the place and chittering so I knew they were there. Never did get a pic. Later, I saw a strange squirrel and tried to photograph it, but it kept jumping from limb to limb and then disappeared. Right above it, in the treetop, was a Black Chinned Hummer that I was able to photograph.

And I love stats, so....

• Daily totals:
  Day 1: 371 observations, 15 new species
  Day 2: 390 observations, 9 new species
  Day 3: 264 observations, 9 new species
  Day 4: 346 observations, 9 new species

• Observed taxa:
  341 Plants
  123 Insects
  28 Birds
  26 Fungi
  15 Arachnids
  7 Mollusks
  5 Reptiles
  2 Mammals
  2 Other
  2 Ray-finned fishes
  2 Protozoa
  1 Amphibians

Carolina Anemone Scavenger Hunt BioBlitz
Saturday, March 23rd, 10am – 2pm
Mansfield City Cemetery

Image by @suz Suzette Rogers

The spring flowers are starting to bloom across Texas and we need your help to find and document a not-so-common species of Anemone, Anemone caroliniana, or the Carolina Anemone. The Anemone North Texans might be most familiar with, A. berlandieri, is known by the common names Tenpetal Anemone and Windflower. Both species grow side-by-side and look alike at first glance, so the Carolina Anemone often gets overlooked. In fact, only 5 DFW locations have been documented on iNaturalist!

Come join us on Saturday, March 23rd at 10am at the Mansfield City Cemetery (a documented location) to learn what to look for and participate in a Scavenger Hunt BioBlitz where we will visit other nearby locations looking specifically for the Carolina Anemone. (Bring a sack lunch with you, too!) Afterward, we will be looking for volunteers to visit locations throughout DFW during the spring blooming period to find as many new locations as we can!

For more information, contact @pfau_tarleton or @kimberlietx. And please tag anyone that you think might be interested!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone that came out to my first annual (wink wink) Birthday BioBlitz! It was the BEST way to spend the night!! I want to run around and give you all hugs again!

And NOW all of my presents are rolling in.... the hundreds of observations we made! I haven't even looked at my own photos yet because I've been looking to see what you guys are posting! SO many good things!!

Here's a quick link for the night that will update as more and more gets added:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2018-09-29&place_id=57484&project_id=25049&subview=grid&view=species

I decided to go ahead and create a BioBlitz project so we can have Leaderboards!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/overton-ridge-park-bioblitz-fall-2018

Again, I can't thank you all enough for sharing my bday with me, doing what I love! (What we ALL love!)

@brentano @wildcarrot @sambiology @elizrose @nanofishology @cameralenswrangler @galactic_bug_man @oddfitz @cindylcobb5 @annikaml and Margaret @rehb and Shannon @briangooding @daniel112 @tadamcochran

This is a PUBLIC EVENT OPEN TO EVERYONE, so feel free to invite anyone that would be interested in hanging out with some really great naturalists and iNaturalist's very best!

My birthday is coming up and my family always asks if there is anything I want. This year, I have a very loud YEAH!! A BIRTHDAY BIOBLITZ!! Absolutely nothing compares to sharing my time and passion with friends and family! And making new friends, too!!

We'll have a daylight BioBlitz from 5pm to 7pm to document all the living things at Overton Ridge Park in Keller (my new "pet iNat project,") followed by some blacklighting until 9:30pm to see the night time insects, too!

So, invite your friends, bring your bug spray, cameras, your blacklight setups, your family, and your hiking boots! I'll provide drinks and light snacks.

Here's a little about the location:
Overton Ridge Park (located at 821 Weybridge Lane, Keller, TX 76248) is an 8 acre neighborhood park that is being expanded by 11 acres to include a natural area. The developed part has a playground, basketball court, covered pavillion, outdoor grill, a water fountain, and 2 no-mow fields. (Note: NO bathrooms.) The exciting part is the expansion! It's the old wooded homesite of local sportscaster Dale Hansen. The house has been removed, but some of the old buildings remain (horse barn, grotto pool, tennis court). The majority of the site is covered in oak and hickory trees with a nice footpath up the hill to an overlook where the house used to be and an unmowed horse pasture. (Unfortunately no surface water, just a dried up drainage ditch.) The city has scheduled development in the next year or two, and I'd really like to show them the biodiversity already present so they will keep it as native as possible. If you are interested in bringing your mothing stuff, be advised that there are no electric hookups except one in the pavillion near security lights. There is no formal parking area yet, so parking is in a cul-de-sac area and along the neighborhood streets.

Here is a link to the observations I've made so far:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/overton-ridge-park-keller

Here is a map to the park:
https://goo.gl/maps/sJqdWZuHUoJ2

If you want to share the event on Facebook, here's a link for that:
https://www.facebook.com/events/335192733902391/

And absolutely no gifts... your presence is my present! The more the merrier!!!

This week I found out that my new Collection Projects were not including all of my observations. After posting a support request, @tiwane helped me to understand what was happening. Long story short, if the GPS location of an observation has an accuracy that extends outside of the location, it is not included. For example, if the accuracy is 250m and that circle extends, even partially, outside of the project location borders, that observation would not be included. Tony explains it better in the FAQ.

One of the reasons why this might be happening is because of my camera app location accuracy. I knew that low cell signals would affect the coordinates and accuracy range, but some of my old observations were accurate only to 3km!

(Lakewood Estates Open Space) was missing over 300 observations (1/3 of all observations) because the GPS coordinates were outside of the boundary OR, more frequently, the accuracy of the observation extended outside of the boundary. I greatly expanded the border of the location and batch edited all of my observations near that location to an accuracy of 1m or 5m (took a little trial and error). The project is now within 4 observations of what it should be.

PRIOR to change:
568 observations, 363 species

AFTER change:
905 observations, 486 species

I also noticed this issue with my newest project, Overton Ridge Park. This one was easier solved by just broadening the location to a really wide area, but it is no longer clear what the coordinates of the actual location are.

I'm still watching and tweaking things, and obviously iNat is always making improvements.

A great day at Overton Ridge Park! I came across two unusual species today (pending ID confirmation.)


Orange Epipagis Moth (Epipagis fenestralis)
2nd observation in DFW!



Dyscrasis hendeli (Ulidiidae, Picture-winged Flies)
1st observation in DFW, and 2nd on iNaturalist!

(The pictures aren't great, but I think it's enough to get an ID. Special thanks to my dog for "setting out the bait".)

Since the destruction and development of my beloved Clocktower Field, I've been looking for a new location that Everest (my dog) and I can explore and document. We have another spot that we've been documenting, but as luck would have it, the city has started some utility improvements so our access is limited for now.

Necessity is the mother of invention...
So I reached out to the city Parks Department Manager and picked his brain. He suggested a location in the northern part of the city (where I rarely go). This tiny neighborhood park, Overton Ridge Park, is being expanded to include 11 acres of natural area, he told me. The cool thing is that it used to be the homesite of Dale Hansen (over 10 years ago) so I went to check it out. It's really great looking! Lots of oaks and hickories. Hilly. Only a small section of the old homesite has buildings. Great opportunity for interpretive walks once it's done. Unfortunately, the only surface water on the property is a dried up drainage creek. No consistent water, yet. There are intentions of adding features to keep water on the property to attract birds, etc.

I'm excited to have a beautiful place to explore again. Hopefully the city will use the data I collect to help with keeping the native flora and fauna as intact as possible. And I would LOVE to see other iNatters come visit the location, too!

Before I left for the Del Rio BioBlitz I decided to use my camera less and get back to using my cell phone and the iNat app for more of the observations that I'm not trying to turn into a photography show piece. (Sarcasm there, friends.) That was sort of a trial-run for the City Nature Challenge, where I needed to still get a lot of observations in, but without sitting at the laptop editing like mad. It has worked wonderfully! I no longer sit for hours reviewing, cropping, and being overly particular about every image. As soon as I leave a location I hit UPLOAD, and then I only have a few distance shots of birds and such to add at home. And even better, I already have IDs and comments to review when I finally DO sit down at the laptop.

I've come to realize a couple of things though, none of which are terribly surprising. 1) I love having ID suggestions so easily at my fingertips. 2) I still suck at picking the right ID.

Auto-suggest is great for very common species in very common iNat areas with clear pictures. How it can tell the difference between some of the Odonates is just mind blowing to me. But even in DFW, I frequently pick the wrong thing from Auto-suggest if I have no idea. It doesn't help that the top suggestions are occasionally species that don't occur in DFW at all.

I've debated about using a more conservative selection, but I wonder what new users are experiencing, so I continue to explore it. (I'm one of those in the "best guess" camp that tries to put my best guess on the observation and revise or withdraw as appropriate. Yes, there are many people that despise this approach, and I'm ok with that because they have their own camp. It takes all kinds...)

I've also noticed some glitchy user errors on the website auto-suggest when I'm uploading new observations. For example, I might know the tree is an oak, but if I'm not sure WHICH oak, I scroll through using the images for comparison. Often, I'll go back and select the genus or family thinking I'll dig into it more later, only to find that somehow I unintentionally selected the one oak species NOT in DFW. ?!?! I've tagged a couple of recent ones that I recall.

One thing I've come to appreciate more now that I'm using the auto-suggest is the quality and type of photos on the taxon page, that is displayed on the auto-suggest. If I know I have a Packera species (and that in itself is progress!) but not which one, I'll scroll through the suggestions to compare leaf images. Except there aren't any. There are eleventy-six pictures of the flowers (which all look the same) but not a single leaf picture. When I come across this situation (at the laptop) I will go through the images and swap out the first few to have significant identifying features pop up first. A couple of flower pics, but also leaves, whole plant, seeds, fruit, bark, etc.

I hope, despite all the incorrect IDs I've put out there --with or without the auto-suggest--, that I'm learning every day and somehow still helping to improve iNat in whatever little way I can.

CALLING ALL POWER USERS, and anyone else with major BioBlitzing experience!

I'm sure many of us that participated in the CNC last year experienced the excitement of the first day of the challenge, the absolute physical exhaustion on the last day, and finally the mental exhaustion of uploading and ID'ing everything in a mad rush before the cutoff. With only a few weeks to go, we've got time to get our game plans mapped out and fine tune our plans of action!

I don't think any "rules" have been published for this year's competition yet, but there are still 3 ways to win: most observations, most species, most users. I thought it would be great to collect tips and tricks that you used last year to help maximize our impact for this year. (This post is not limited to DFW users! It's meant to help us all improve our challenge techniques by learning from one another.)

So toss out some ideas on things you consider helpful advice to make it through the nature marathon! I'll get us started with the first comment!

(I'm going to tag some folks, but feel free to tag others! If you do not want notifications on this post, you can "Unsubscribe from this post" by clicking on the tool wheel on the notification.)

@sambiology @wildcarrot @tfandre @denver @drtifflipsett @tadamcochran @charley @brentano @taogirl @cgritz @naturenut @suz @andyk @mchlfx @zooga1961 @dfwuw @itmndeborah @butterflies4fun @aguilita @kalamurphyking @rehb @squaylei2000 @mustardlypig @picklepastures @daniel112 @galactic_bug_man @lulubelle @postoak @katelyn3 @gcwarbler @hydaticus @beschwar @amzapp @dpom @dlbowls @hfabian @kestrel @sea-kangaroo @damontighe @greglasley