We end Week 15 in the US Virgin Islands - the 104th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. These islands sit between Puerto Rico to the West and the British Virgin Islands to the East. The top three observers in the US Virgin Islands: @casseljs, @thehappiestwanderer and @stinger, and also @mickley have observations clustered in the northwest island of St. Thomas. @stinger is a plant ecologist and a giant in the field of biodiversity informatics behind such efforts as ITIS and BISON. Most of the top observers, e.g. @heather232, @corey22, @emily28, @sarka and e@as_is_the_sea, have observations clustered on the north east island of St. John. A few, scuh as @grodz & juddpatterson, are clustered on the southern island of St. Croix.

The number of observations per month ramped up significantly in 2019.

@maractwin is the top identifier and leads in fish. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of fish observations here. @kemper and @rangertreaty50 are other top identifiers with lots of fish IDs. @joshuagsmith leads in bird IDs and @mack911 leads in fungi IDs.

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

@casseljs @thehappiestwanderer @stinger @heather232 @corey22 @maractwin @rangertreaty50 @joshuagsmith @mack911 @kemper

We’ll remain in the Caribbean tomorrow on Curaçao!

Saint Kitts and Nevis the 104th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. @susanhewitt is by far the top observer and is pretty much singlehandedly holding down these islands with her annual visits. @susanhewitt's observations are mostly on Nevis along with top observers @cherrielee and @ktratboy. Other top observers such as @mlodinow, @ronald63, @narpus, and @jmeerman have observations on nearby St. Kitts. Its noteworthy that @gabriel217, in 10th place on the leaderboard, has only posted iNat observations from Saint Kitts and Nevis and doesn't have any observations posted from elsewhere.

The graph of observations per month pretty much just shows @susanhewitt's annual visits in June 2015, May 2016, Aoril 2017, April 2018, and March, 2019..

@adorantes, from the nearby Yucatan, is the top identifier by far and leads in plant, bird, and arachnid IDs. Thanks to other top identifiers such as @kitty12, @ehabes, @rajibmaulick, and @chrisharpe

What can we do to get more people in Saint Kitts and Nevis using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.

@susanhewitt @mlodinow @ronald63 @cherrielee @narpus @adorantes @kitty12 @ehabes @rajibmaulick @chrisharpe

We’ll be back tomorrow in the US Virgin Islands!

Paraguay is the 103rd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The top observer by a healthy margin is @jaykeller with observations around the capital of Asunción. Several other top observers such as @joaquinmovia (a volunteer at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural del Paraguay) and @emiliobuongermini (a biologist involved in an NGO dedicated to improve the knowledge of Paraguayan biodiversity) and @titolahaye. Other top observers such as @elacroix-carignan (a biology student at Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec), @rob21, @mfaucher have observations clustered around Loma Plata in the Paraguayan Chaco. @watarumatsunaga has observations clustered along the Paraná river border with Argentina and @ammartin's observations are in a great transect across the country. @alee4 doesn't appear on the map (which was crunched on Septermber 1st) but has many new observations in the southern half of the country and is now 10th on the observer leaderboard.

Paraguay es la parada 103 en el iNaturalist Tour Mundial. El observador superior por un margen saludable es @jaykeller con observaciones alrededor de la capital de Asunción. Varios otros observadores importantes como @joaquinmovia (voluntario en el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural del Paraguay) y @emiliobuongermini (biólogo involucrado en una ONG dedicada a mejorar el conocimiento de la biodiversidad paraguaya) y @titolahaye. Otros observadores principales como @elacroix-carignan (estudiante de biología en la Universidad de Sherbrooke en Quebec), @rob21, @mfaucher tienen observaciones agrupadas alrededor de Loma Plata en el Chaco paraguayo. @watarumatsunaga tiene observaciones agrupadas a lo largo de la frontera del río Paraná con Argentina y las observaciones de @ammartin se encuentran en un gran transecto en todo el país. @alee4 no aparece en el mapa (que fue procesado el 1 de septiembre) pero tiene muchas observaciones nuevas en la mitad sur del país y ahora es el décimo en la tabla de clasificación de observadores.

Observations seem to have ticked up in 2019. The peak in April 2017 was driven by @jaykeller while the peak in Jan-Mar 2019 was largely driven by @joaquinmovia, @elacroix-carignan, and @rob21.

Las observaciones parecen haber aumentado en 2019. El pico en abril 2017 fue impulsado por @jaykeller mientras que el pico en Enero-marzo de 2019 fue impulsado en gran medida por @joaquinmovia, @elacroix-carignan y @rob21.

@nicoolejnik from nearby Argentina is the top identifier and leads in birds, arachnids, and mollusks. Top observer @joaquinmovia leads in insect and plant IDs and top observer @emiliobuongermini leads in herp and mammal IDs. Thanks to other top identifiers such as @jbroadhead and @john8.

@nicoolejnik, de la vecina Argentina, es el principal identificador y es líder en aves, arácnidos y moluscos. El observador superior @joaquinmovia lidera en identificaciones de insectos y plantas y el observador superior @emiliobuongermini lidera en identificaciones de herpes y mamíferos. Gracias a otros identificadores principales como @jbroadhead y @john8.

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

¿Qué podemos hacer para que más personas en Paraguay utilicen iNaturalist? Comparta sus pensamientos a continuación o en este hilo del foro.

@jaykeller @joaquinmovia @emiliobuongermini @elacroix-carignan @titolahaye @rob21 @watarumatsunaga @nicoolejnik @jbroadhead @john8

We’ll be back tomorrow in Saint Kitts and Nevis!

¡Volveremos mañana en Saint Kitts y Nevis!

New Caledonia the 102nd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. @lisa\_bennett is the top observer and unusually has observations clustered on Ouvéa Island, one of the smaller Loyalty Islands. @harryrosenthal also has observations clustered on the Loyalty Islands. Most of the other top observers have observations on the largest island of Grande Terre. Many top observers such as @damienbr have observations clustered around the capital of Nouméa. Other top observers on Grande Terre include @vmoser,, @leonperrie, @jakob, @freddesmoulins, @lennarthud, @nataliemhowe, and @mazancourt.

The graph of observations per month shows an increasing since mid 2018.

@maractwin is the top identifier and leads in fish. @jakob leads in insects and @whimbrelbirder leads in birds, @phelsumas4life leads in other animals, @leonperrie leads in plants and @susanhewitt leads in mollusks. Thanks to other identifiers such as @rfoster.

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

@lisa_bennett @damienbr @leonperrie @vmoser @jakob @freddesmoulins @maractwin @whimbrelbirder @rfoster @phelsumas4life

We’ll be back tomorrow in Paraguay!

Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are the 101st stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. There's some confusion about this entity which is also known as the Caribbean Netherlands. There used to be an entity known as the Netherlands Antilles which included these three islands and also Curaçao, Sint Maarten (the dutch half of the island), and Aruba. Aruba left in 1986 and in 2010 Sint Maarten and Curaçao left effectively dissolving the Netherlands Antilles. This new Caribbean Netherlands entity is a bit inconvenient for our purposes though since it includes two islands, Sint Eustatius and Saba, in the northern Caribbean near Sint Maarten and one island, Bonaire, in the southern Caribbean near Curaçao and Aruba, hence the odd looking map.

The top observer is @sea-kangaroo who has observations on all three islands. Interestingly, of all the top 10 observers who have observations on Sint Eustatius or Saba also have them on Bonaire (e.g. @zahnerphoto, @ehabes, @neild, and @seahorses\_of\_the\_world). But all of these but the @seahorses\_of\_the\_world account have their observations clustered to the Sint Eustatius or Saba side of the Caribbean. @ehabes is at Utrecht University in the Netherlands studying the invasive vine Antigonon leptopus on these islands. Several top observers such as @lovelyclemmy, @anudibranchmom, @sarka, @rogerritt and @vivienneo only have observations on Bonaire to the south. The iSeahorse project has a blog post about a seahorse sighting by @kbodle on Bonaire.

The graph of observations per month is still quite jagged, indicating that its dominated by visits by individual users such as this visit in Feb 2019 by underwater enthusiast @zahnerphoto. But the background number of observations does seem to have ticked up in recent years.

@maractwin is the top identifier and leads in fish. @kemper is another top fish identifier here. @kent\_miller leads in marine (non-mollusk) invertebrates ('other animals') and @ehabes leads in plant IDs.
While @john8 leads in bird IDs, West Indies Ornithologist @chrisharpe is one of the top identifiers. @susanhewitt leads in mollusk IDs. On her profile, @susanhewitt describes a paper she wrote on marine mollusks of Saba (using iNat data!) and that she participated in an scientific expedition to Sint Eustatius in 2015.

What can we do to get more people in Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.

@sea-kangaroo @zahnerphoto @lovelyclemmy @ehabes @anudibranchmom @maractwin @kent_miller @chrisharpe @susanhewitt @kemper

We’ll be back tomorrow in New Caledonia!

The Solomon Islands are the 100th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. Cheers to making it through 100 stops! The top observer by a very healthy margin is @maractwin who is an avid diver. Several other top observers such as @insequentways and @tonydiver also focus on the rich marine life the Solomon Islands have to offer. Many top observers such as @devonderaad, @isaacrush, and @juliasunnarborg have observations clustered in the Western Province. Its noteworthy that all of @juliasunnarborg's iNaturalist observations are from the Solomon Islands. Other top observers such as @jbecky and @vespadelus have observations clustered in the Guadalcanal Province. Don't miss this Observation of the Week post about a snail seen in the Solomon Islands by @vespadelus observed during biodiversity survey he was involved in. @plantcrazy007 uniquely has observations clustered in the Malaita Province. You can read more about @plantcrazy007 in this Observation of the Week post about a Land Planarian he found Solomon Islands while researching forest ethnobotany. @obinfiji, who works for BirdLife International on nearby Fiji, uniquely has observations clustered in the Rennell and Bellona Province.

The graph of observations per month is dominated by 3 visits by the prolific @maractwin in Dec 2014, Apr 2018 and May 2019. But if you ignore these peaks there appears to be some organic growth in 2019.

@kemper is the top identifier and also the top fish identifier. @isaacrush leads in bird IDs and
@phelsumas4life leads in 'other animals' (aka Solomon Island marine inverts). @glmory, @petdoc and @maractwin are also top identifiers.

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

@maractwin @devonderaad @jbecky @isaacrush @insequentways @tonydiver @kemper @glmory @petdoc @phelsumas4life

We’ll be back tomorrow in Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba!

It's Week 15 of the iNaturalist World Tour. This week we'll visit Cambodia in Asia, the Solomon islands and New Caledonia in the Pacific; Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the United States Virgin Islands all in the Caribbean; and Paraguay in South America.

We begin in Cambodia. The top observer by a long shot is @geechartier who lives in south-west Cambodia and has posted nearly a quarter of all observations from the country. @jessicalowery is a top observer with observations clustered in the part of the country around the capital of Phnom Penh @myerssusan has observations throughout the northern part of the country including the popular travel destination of Angkor Wat. @lhurteau and @joshh17 also have observations clustered around Angkor Wat. @kudadivers is a diving centre and marine conservation project based on the island of Koh Sdach on the West coast of Cambodia. @fern\_friend has observations clustered around Virachey National Park in the North East while @taewoo and @mark185 have observations clustered around Phnum Prech Wildlife Sanctuary in the South East. @bob080247 lives and works in North West Cambodia where he studies plant pests, weeds and beneficial insects to cropping systems. You can read about @stephane\_degreef who has written a guide to the arthropods of northwest Cambodia in this Observation of the Week post.

The number of observations has ticked up substantially in 2019 which seems to be organic growth from visitors and residents.

The top identifier is @rajibmaulick based in India. @charliev leads in herp IDs, @hkmoths leads in insect IDs, @kokhuitan leads in bird IDs, @nopcoeur leads in arachnid IDs, and @ongzi leads in plant IDs.

What can we do to improve iNaturalist in Cambodia? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread.

@geechartier @jessicalowery @myerssusan @lhurteau @joshh17 @rajibmaulick @charliev @hkmoths @kokhuitan @nopcoeur

We’ll be back tomorrow in the Solomon Islands!

Today we officially celebrate the public launch of iNaturalist Australia! The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is the eighth organization to join the international iNaturalist Network. ALA is a collaborative, digital, open infrastructure that pulls together Australian biodiversity data from multiple sources, making it accessible and reusable.

Research-grade observations from Australia have been directly incorporated in the Atlas of Living Australia since 2016, similarly to how the Global Biodiversity Information Facility regularly updates research-grade observations on a global scale. By joining the iNaturalist Network and establishing a formal agreement, obscured location data from species at risk can be more easily shared between iNaturalist and ALA.

At the time of launch, Australia has almost 700,000 verifiable observations, which ranks it fourth globally in terms of iNaturalist activity, following the United States, Canada, and Mexico. You can read more about trends in activity in the iNaturalist World Tour post for Australia.

The ALA team is excited to be collaborating with iNaturalist to help more Australians explore biodiversity by sharing their observations, and improve the quality of data in the ALA.

“Working with iNaturalist is a wonderful opportunity for us and our users. Human observation data is a valuable part of the ALA, and iNaturalist Australia's species identification features and data quality measures will ensure plant, animal or fungi sightings are more valuable than ever,” said Andre Zerger, Director, Atlas of Living Australia.

The iNaturalist Network now has eight nationally-focused sites that are fully connected and interoperable with the global iNaturalist site. The sites are: NaturaLista Mexico, iNaturalist NZ — Mātaki Taiao (formerly NatureWatch NZ), iNaturalist Canada, Naturalista Colombia, Biodiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalist Panamá, iNaturalist Ecuador, and now iNaturalist Australia. Any iNaturalist user can log in on any of the sites using their same credentials and will see the same notifications.

The iNaturalist Network model allows for localizing the iNaturalist experience to better support communities on a national scale and local leadership in the movement, without splitting the community into isolated, national sites. The iNaturalist team is grateful to the outreach, training, translations, and user support carried out through the efforts of the iNaturalist Network member institutions.

We look forward to welcoming many new Australian members of the iNaturalist community and watching how participation grows during the Austral spring and summer!

Ethiopia is the 98th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour and the last stop on Week 14. All 10 of the top observers are clustered around the capital of Addis Ababa and areas nearby such as Bale Mountains National Park, this includes @kerejoo, @markuslilje, @hdemann, @zdufran, @wildchroma, @woodridgejeff, @nikborrow, @tiluchi, @neomorphus, and @khenderson. Only a handful of top observers such as @paolaferruzzi are clustered elsewhere such as the city of Gondar to the north.. You can read more about Bale Mountains National Park in this Observation of the Week post featuring an observation by @veronika\_johansson.

The number of observatioins per month has been slowy increasing since 2017.

@jakob is the top identifier and leads in mammals. @johnnybirder leads in birds @lera who is involved in the Plants of Ethiopia NatureMap project leads in plant IDs and @cabintom leads in insect IDs. @ldacosta, @john8, @rjq are also top identifiers in Ethiopia.

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

@kerejoo @markuslilje@hdemann @zdufran @wildchroma @jakob @johnnybirder @ldacosta @john8 @rjq

We’ll be back tomorrow in Cambodia!

Our Observation of the Week is the first Arctic Burrowing Anemone (Halcampa arctica) posted to iNaturalist, seen in Svalbard and Jan Mayen by @heather340!

As a child growing up in Maine, Heather Glon was surrounded by family members who were gardeners and birders, and who loved to be outside. Heather herself explored the woods and the beach, and eventually majored in marine biology. She’s now “in my fourth year of my PhD at the Ohio State University studying the biogeography and systematics of sea anemones. 

Though my research is mainly focused on one particular genus, Metridium, I am always on the lookout for other sea anemone species to collect or document, since oftentimes someone else in the lab or a collaborator needs a certain species for their research.

While participating in a recent six week course on Svalbard, Heather heard about a nearby shore dive “[that] had fields of Halcampa arctica.

As my advisor and a labmate are working within this group of anemones for their research, I was anxious to go and collect them a specimen or two!...However, even though the site was easy to access by taking a taxi, we did have to bring along a friend with a rifle and flare gun to be on shore duty, since you are required to have a gun outside of the town limits due to the presence of polar bears in the area. 

Anyways, we started finding the anemones in about 2 meters depth of water, which made for a very easy dive! I was able to collect a few specimens as well as take plenty of photographs, so I was thrilled to be able to have that experience.

Like other anemones, Halcampa arctica has a ring of stinging tentacles surrounding its mouth (which, to put it delicately, is the only entrance and exit of its digestive system). But unlike many of sea anemones , it does not latch onto a hard surface with a pedal disc. It instead burrows into soft sediment to keep itself in place. As Heather described, they can be abundant in some areas, such as in the field seen in this photo. 

Heather (above right, with her dive buddy Ivan at the dive site) tells me she uses iNat “both my research and for personal documentation/ID help on things that I see.” The species she studies, Metridium senile, is pretty common, so Heather will look for iNat observations before a collection trip, and has asked other users to send her some specimens if she’s unable to visit an area. She’s also been in contact with other anemone researchers about her own observations, 

and now we (along with another iNaturalist user) are putting together a manuscript regarding those observations. It’s been fantastic seeing iNaturalist evolve as an essential tool in the toolkit for my PhD research! I have plans to incorporate it into future outreach, as well as integrating it into my teaching with students here at Ohio State to further engage them in the natural world around them.  

Photo of Heather by Jan Phillipp Geissel. 

- You can check out Heather’s website here, and her Sea Anemones of the World project here.

- Longyearbyen Dykkerklubb provided the equipment for Heather’s dive buddy Ivan, and more photos from this dive are posted on their Facebook page.