Today we are releasing a couple updates to the newest types of projects - collection and umbrella projects. We first launched these new project types in April, shortly before the City Nature Challenge, to address a few common feature requests for traditional projects.

The most significant difference of collection and umbrella projects compared to traditional projects is the new types do not require observations to be added to a project, rather they automatically feature observations matching the criteria of the project. One downside of the automatic nature of these projects is there is nothing stored in our database saying which projects an observation belongs to. So, since launch, observation details pages have not shown which collection or umbrella projects include an observation. This has been one of the most requested features since the launch of these projects, and starting today you will now be able to see collection and umbrella projects that include an observation from the observation detail page.

Another difference in collection and umbrella projects is they were only able to be “followed” and not “joined” like traditional projects. There were a few reasons for this - mainly that membership to traditional projects only provides a few benefits, most of which don’t apply to collections and umbrellas. For example there is no observation submission for new projects, so obviously the membership-based submission rule of traditional projects does not apply. New projects also do not allow access to private and obscured coordinates, which traditional projects allow via settings on a users’ membership settings.

The second change we are making is a move from the “following” model to a “membership” model just like traditional projects. Membership to new projects still does not allow for the same features as traditional projects (no rules for observation submission, and no access to private or obscured coordinates). But membership sets us up to enable new features in the future, and makes new projects more consistent with traditional projects. One feature consistent across all projects is members can choose to receive updates from the project or not. Essentially a user can now be a “member” of a new project without “following” the project.

These two changes (observation pages show new projects, and projects have members not just followers) are complementary. Since anyone can create a collection project to include any observations they want, it's possible a user’s observations are included in a project they aren’t involved with. So we are limiting the new projects shown on the observation details page to only the projects the observer has joined. This makes the project shown more relevant to the observer, and prevents the observation details page from being “spammed” by undesirable or mis-configured projects.

These changes came out of user feedback on the new project types released in April. We are continuing to improve projects based on your feedback, and will notify you as changes are released. Thanks for your patience and please let us know if you encounter any bugs (of the software kind).

Our Observation of the Week is this Violet Sea Apple, seen off of Taiwan by @huang_shu_chen!

You might have noticed that the number observations from Taiwan have been growing quite a bit (see chart below), showing off the incredible biodiversity of the island and its surroundings. Much of this growth has has been spurred by a community of both researchers and citizen scientists, one of whom is Cheng-Tao Lin (@mutolisp), the current top observer in Taiwan and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Resources at National Chiayi University. Prof. Lin has graciously translated the responses from this week’s observer, so I want to thank him and Shu-Chen for collaborating on this.

huang_shu_chen (whom I’ll refer to as Shu-Chen), is a diving volunteer for the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology in Keelung, Taiwan, and says “My partner and I (see below) do routine underwater work about coral reef restoration, patrol and investigation, and assist in recording species to create a marine diversity checklist. In addition to these routine tasks, I will also take photos of these beautiful marine creatures.”

The beautiful Violet Sea Apple you see above was taken by Shu-Chen during her first dive using an underwater camera with a flash, and she tells me

it is also the first time I saw such a fascinating and gorgeous sea cucumber, just the same as its name, “red apple”. It’s a pity that I did not meet its “flowering” state (when it stretches tentacles to catch plankton). If I had a chance to see its flower, I will upload it to iNat again!

As Shu-Chen says, these creatures are sea cucumbers, although we use a different vegetative term to describe them (apple) due to their more round shape than your standard sea cucumber. The “flowering” behavior she describes is how the creature catches plankton, by extending its frilly tentacles into the water. And like many other sea cucumbers, violet sea apples can expel parts of their sticky innards into the water when threatened, allowing a predator to concentrate on its entrails rather than the rest of its body. If that doesn’t work, they also have two tricks up their sleeves: they can release a toxin known as holothurin (a type of saponin) into the water, and they can also ingest water, allowing them to double in size and use currents and gravity to sweep them to a new home.

Shu-Chen (above) has recently joined iNaturalist, and says

my photos of nature were just silently stored in my own computer disks in the past, but since I learned about iNaturalist platform, and that observation data uploaded to iNaturalist would become part of GBIF data, I’m so glad that they could be used and studied by other people around the world...I also use iNaturalist to create species checklist at the place where I care and concern. It is really convenient to have iNaturalist to record nature observations, and it motivates me to collect more data.

- by Tony Iwane. 

- Why not take a gander at some of the great observations being made in Taiwan? Here are the faved ones. 

- Some Pearlfish will use the anus of a sea cucumber as a home and/or eat their gonads. This is true. 

- Sea cucumbers demonstrate some astonishing diversity, check out observations of them here!

Our Observation of the Week is this sequence of photos depicting a Black-breasted Snake Eagle scarfing down a Cape Cobra on the wing! Seen in South Africa by @happyasacupcake.

When I look through faved observations to find the Observation of the Day and see a photo capturing a cool behavior or interaction, odds are good the photo was taken by Copper, who goes by happyasacupcake on iNaturalist. And when I saw the above photo and the rest of the series, I just had to choose it.

“Kgalagadi [Transfrontier Park] is one of our favourite game parks, especially for the raptors,” explains Copper.

We noticed the snake eagle with the cobra as it flew up from the ground. We were lucky beyond belief in that it didn’t fly away, but flew slow circles over a clear area close to the road. Every time it flew towards us I took more shots. When I look at the time it took to take the photographs, I can’t believe it was only three minutes. It was so exciting and so charged! We knew this was the sighting of a lifetime.

While it seems kind of inconceivable, this behavior is pretty standard for black-breasted snake eagles. They do prey mainly on snakes but will take lizards and other small vertebrates. Like many other raptors, they dive swiftly and grab their prey with sharp talons, which are protected with thick scales. After crushing or tearing off the snake’s head, these eagles do often swallow the animal whole while in flight.

In this case the prey was a cape cobra, a diurnal serpent equipped with powerful venom. It hunts a variety of small vertebrates and its habit of hanging out near buildings does mean that people and Cape Cobras do run into each other. In addition to snake eagles, honey badgers, meerkats and and secretary birds will also hunt the cape cobra.

When I asked Copper how he was able get so many amazing behavioral photos (check out his most-faved observations for some examples), he told me “I’m on the lookout for them all the time, that is when I learn the most,” and advised:

• “Patience is key. Usually the animals have to settle down from your intrusion before being themselves again.”

• “Always being ready to take a shot. You never know when a raptor is going to do something amazing.”  

• “[Go with] a buddy with the same interests. I don’t mean nature broadly, but birds, or snakes, or scorpions.”
  

He expands on that last tip by saying “I have read lots of tales of woe of plant enthusiasts trying to make observations when they are with reptile enthusiasts.”

While he was always interested in nature, Copper says it was retirement and a move which allowed him the opportunity to start exploring and photographing it.  “I spent decades with my nose pinned to a computer screen working on spreadsheets, accounts and maps,” he recalls. “When we retired, we moved to a conservancy close to Kruger National Park and found a whole new world on our doorstep just waiting for us...Birds will probably always be my first love. But I became more interested in insects and spiders when I saw the amazing observations on iNat. One day in April I decided to take a walk around the house and do my best to photograph every small creature I saw. I couldn’t believe how many different, fascinating things I saw. I am well and truly hooked.

There is no question that iNat has changed the way I interact with the natural world. I find that now instead of just assessing whether something is ‘pretty’ or not, I’m much more inclined to stop and watch. I have much more respect for the natural world...There is nothing scientific about what I do, I just have a love of nature which iNat has flamed into an obsession! I now get triple enjoyment from the things I see, firstly the sighting, then working through the photos, and finally, sharing the observation with people who are interested. I value the identifications, the information available, and the fact that in some small way I may be helping.

- by Tony Iwane

- Make sure to take a look at the entire series of snake eagle photos that Copper posted!

- A brown snake eagle confronts a snouted cobra at Kruger National Park!

- A sea eagle wrestles with a sea snake in mid-air! 

Our Observation of the Day is this Syzygites megalocarpus mold, seen in New York by @tbigelow!

Molds can be pretty beneficial to humans - think Penicillum for both blue cheese and antibiotics - but they can also be detrimental, causing ringworm on our skin or forcing us to throw out the remainder of that loaf of bread.  Many other organisms are affected my molds, and in the case of Syzygites megalocarpus that includes their fellow fungi.

Tom Bigelow, who is the current president of the New York Mycological Society, took the above photograph while on an NYMS walk in Harriman State Park back in the summer of 2013. “[It’s] a common parasite that attacks a variety of fungi - I most often encounter it on boletes,” says Tom. “The infected bolete [in this case] had a very long stipe, so the sporangiophores hang down like hair…”

Syzygites megalocarpus, as Tom notes, is a mold that that parasitizes other fungi, especially those we think of as “mushrooms.” When a spore lands on a suitable host, such as a mushroom, it extends hyphae into it. These hyphae use enzymes to break down the mushroom’s flesh, the components of which are absorbed by the mold. When Syzygites megalocarpus is ready to reproduce, it grows sporangiophores on the surface of the mushroom. At first they are often white or bright yellow before eventually hanging down and attaining a more grayish pallor. The spores at the ends will be picked up by the wind, in the hopes of chancing upon another host. Molds like this are integral to many ecosystems, as they contribute greatly to decomposition

“I was drawn to the NYMS the same way most people come to amateur mycology: an interest in learning how to find and identify edible wild mushrooms,” explains Tom. “It was under the influence of the NYMS’s guiding light, Gary Lincoff, author of The Audubon Guide to Mushrooms, that my interests quickly expanded. With Gary’s guidance and encouragement, the NYMS began an intensive survey, about 7 years ago, of fungi occurring in New York City. We now hold weekly walks in city parks all year round.”

The society began participating in the North American Mycoflora Project this year, which, as Tom (pictured above) explains, is

a collaboration between professional and amateur mycologists that aims to systematically document fungi in North America. Participating clubs document their collections using an online platform (our club uses iNaturalist!); collect specimens for deposit in an herbarium (in our case, the New York Botanical Garden); collect tissue samples for DNA sequencing.

iNaturalist is not only the online platform for NYMS’s contributions to the mycoflora project, he says “it is an excellent way for me to archive my photos which I have been amassing for the 10 years that I’ve been seriously interested in observing and collecting fungi.” Here’s hoping for more amazing fungal photos from Tom’s archives!

- by Tony Iwane

- If you’re interested in posting mushroom observations to iNaturalist, our Introduction to Mushrooming video has some advice and tips from @leptiona!

- Game of Molds is a great fungal take on Game of Thrones’ epic opening title sequence. 

- This blog post has some cool facts about Syzygites megalocarpus mold.

- NYMS has several iNaturalist projects, which can be found here, here, and over here.

- Is it safe to eat moldy bread? 

This Violet Carpenter Bee, seen in the Czech Republic by @boromir, is our Observation of the Week!

“I think I have always liked taking photos of wildlife when on holiday, but the photos just ended up on the computer disk not - shared with anyone and soon forgotten by me too,” says Miroslava Borovcová - Mirka for short - a secondary school English teacher in the small town of Vysoke Mýto in the east of Bohemia, the Czech Republic.

That changed, however, in 2016 when she started working on Plugging into Nature with New Technologies, an Erasmus+ and eTwinning project. “The idea of the project,” she says, “is ‘let’s accept that the teens can’t imagine their lives without new technologies so why don’t we encourage them to go outdoors with their smartphones and cameras, observe and capture the wildlife and determine the observations using mobile applications.’” She found iNaturalist through this program and decided to try it out with her classes.

As I wanted to set an example to my students, I became an iNaturalist [user] myself and started taking photos of wildlife whenever I went outdoors. Originally a duty became a pleasure and passion and I found myself going outdoors more often than ever before. It is amazing to watch how many different species live close to us and determining them using iNaturalist is quite easy even for me, a complete amateur. I started noticing and admiring all possible tiny flowers that I just did not see before.

In 2017, Mirka planted some levanda (lavender) plants by her house and has been amazed by the number of insects they attract.  

I like observing them, I love the noise they make and of course I love the levanda smell probably as much as they do. When I saw the violet carpenter bee, I was absolutely fascinated. I took lots of photos of it - since it was moving all the time and I have just a common automatic digital camera, I was not very optimistic about the results. Later that day, when I had downloaded the snaps on the computer, I was looking at one photo after another and deleting them as not satisfactory ones, when finally the good one was on the screen - pretty good one in fact. I was overjoyed and uploaded it immediately on iNaturalist. When I checked iNaturalist in the evening and found out it was chosen as the observation of the day, I was surprised and really happy.

Ranging through continental Europe and Asia, the Violet Carpenter Bee gets its name from the purple sheen of its wings and is a large insect that averages about 22mm in length. Like nearly all other Carpenter Bees, pregnant females chew tunnels into dead wood where they create cells for their young. In each cell is an egg as well as a pollen ball - a protein-rich feast for the larva which emerges. Once it’s eaten its fill, the larva will go through complete metamorphosis. Despite their intimidating size, these bees are not aggressive.

Mirka (above, in Portugal, where she is enjoying a holiday) explains “I just love iNaturalist as a great way of sharing. It is great to be a part of the giant team and the interactions are fantastic - sometimes even before uploading the last of the day' s catches, there are the first determinations and responses from the other inaturalists.” She and her students have contributed several hundred observations to iNaturalist and you can see their projects here. Although it’s summer break now, Mirka says “I believe that in September when we are all back at school and when they learn about the violet carpenter bee from me, they will become more enthusiastic about iNaturalist and more involved.”

- by Tony Iwane. Some of Mirka’s quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

- Watch a Violet Carpenter Bee get at some wood!

- Mirka and her students are monitoring the biodiversity of a bike path in their town!

- Some Carpenter Bees, as well as other nectar eaters, engage in a practice known as nectar robbing - avoiding the reproductive parts of the flower to get straight at the nectar!

- Violet Carpenter Bees are slowly expanding northward and started to show up in the British Isles just over a decade ago. 

- Check out a previous bee-related Observation of the Week from @exonie last March, which includes a side-view of a Mason Bee’s nest - similar to that of a Carpenter Bee. 

Our (Belated) Observation of the Week is this group of Phallus luteus mushrooms, seen in Thailand by dawanofmemories!

iNat users have busy lives so sometimes it can take awhile for them to respond for Observation of the Week - and sometimes it can take awhile for me to post it - so here are some cool fungi from Dawan in Thailand!

While we often imagine cool nature finds occurring in exotic, pristine nature preserves, one thing that iNaturalist has proven, which the above photo illustrates, is that you can come across amazing organisms anywhere, even during our decidedly non-nature-centric jobs.

Dawan Kraithong (@dawanofmemories), who found these mushrooms, tells me that her interest in nature stems from her childhood, taught to her mainly by her father. “I am interested in the names...of everything that lives and grows,” she says. A receptionist for a swimming pool in Bangkok, Dawan noticed the Phallus luteus mushrooms “sprouting from the ground” near a patch of bamboo her employer had planted.

The genus name Phallus is, of course, derived from the phallic-looking fruiting bodies of these remarkable fungi, which belong to the family Phallaceae - commonly known as stinkhorns. Unlike most of the mushrooms we are familiar with, which release their spores into the air, stinkhorns instead have a sticky gleba, or spore-producing mass, on the cap. No airborne spores here. Instead, they rely on insects such as flies and ants to land or amble on the gleba and transport the spores which have now stuck to their feet. And one of the best ways to attract flies is to smell like putrefying flesh. Thus, their common name.

The distinctive lacy, net-like structure hanging from the cap of the mushroom is called the indusium. No one is quite sure exactly what its evolutionary purpose is, but one hypothesis posits that it helps crawling insects like beetles and ants find their way to the sticky cap and cover themselves in spores.

Although a recent member of iNaturalist, Dawan (above) has contributed some pretty great finds, like this Blue Crested Lizard. “I use i Naturalist to improve my own interest and learn more about what I see in nature,” she says. “It is my hobby.”

- by Tony Iwane

- Here’s some cool footage of flies and other insects walking all over the glea of a Phallus duplicatus mushroom.

- Before they attain their distinctive shape, young fruiting bodies of Phallus fungi look like little eggs, and if cut open the jelly-like glea can be seen. There’s a nice photo of it here.

Their relatives the butterflies usually get all the attention, but moths make up the vast majority (about 90%) of species of the insect order Lepidoptera and their abundance, diversity, and beauty are pretty staggering.

Even cooler is that many moths are famously attracted to lights (although nobody really knows why), which makes “mothing” - yes, mothing - an easy and fun way to see a bunch of cool insects and make some iNat observations. And now is a great time to do it because National Moth Week is coming up from July 21st - 29th and there are mothing events all over the world, so see if there’s one near you. If you can’t find one in your area, here are some tips for finding them, and iNat users @finatic and @damontighe have also shared their own DIY moth light set-ups here and here.

All moths observed during National Moth Week will be added to the main National Moth Week project and any relevant regional project. Big shout out to @jacobgorneau for taking the time and effort to set these all up!

And as if you needed more motivation, the iNat team always sets up moth lights during our retreats and we saw a beautiful Ceanothus Silk Moth this past March, a lifer for nearly all of us! Above is footage of @kueda taking some photos of it as well as a close-up of the moth the next morning.

If anyone has any mothing tips or stories, please write them in the comments below!

Folks, we are hiring, not one, but two positions on our team of nature nerds, and we'd definitely like to see some applicants from our own community.

UX Designer

Alas, Joelle decided to move on to greener pastures this summer, so we are looking for someone to fill her shoes. Our designer works with our team on a variety of tasks, including visual design, interaction design, user research, and visual asset development (e.g. icons, logos, promotional material). In the past, our designer has worked closely with engineers to develop and refine new features, and, like all members of the team, our designer participates in new product development discussions. Ideally, we're looking for someone with at least a few years of professional experience, and we'd prefer someone based in the San Francisco Bay Area (but will consider folks from elsewhere). Experience with visual and interaction design for software is a must, strength in information visualization and iconography a big plus.

Apply to be an iNaturalist UX designer

Software Engineer

We're looking for a coder with Javascript experience, particularly with React and React Native. This person would be pioneering the use of React Native for new mobile projects (particularly Seek), and most likely working on front-end React applications on the website. Knowledge of native iOS and Android development environments would very useful too, as would basic web development experience. Again, our preference is for candidates in the Bay Area, but we'll certainly consider folks from elsewhere (we all work from home most of the time, two of our staff are in the eastern US, and @budowski is an international man of mystery, so we're pretty comfortable with remotes).

Apply to be an iNaturalist software engineer

Anyway, if this sounds like you, please apply, and if it sounds like someone you know, please tell them to apply! And of course, please share on social media!

Also, the elephant seals barely visible in the background of the photo are not on the team. You don't get to work with elephant seals, sorry.

Our Observation of the Week is this Violet Sea Snail, seen in Brazil by @deboas!

Ben Phalan (deboas) is currently residing in the Brazil, where he is a visiting professor at the Federal University of Bahia, but he’s taken quite a route to get there. Originally from rural Ireland, Ben says “I’ve been a naturalist for as long as I can remember...I was free to spend the entire day out exploring woods, fields, ponds and a large garden. My parents were very supportive, and were unfazed when I filled my bedroom with fungi, ferns, jars housing tadpoles and caterpillars, old skulls, discarded fragments of birds’ eggshells, and whatever else captured my interest.”

While his interests covered nearly all taxa, Ben says he “found it most satisfying when I could put a name to what I had found...and I think I ended up focusing most on birds because of the satisfaction of being able to identify them to species level.” He joined what is now BirdWatch Ireland and eventually learned to band birds, even venturing to Bird Island off of South Georgia to band albatrosses. Ben thanks his many mentors over the years, including John Marsh, the late Oscar Merne, and Alyn Walsh.

Switching gears to study “the effects of agricultural expansion and intensification on biodiversity in Ghana, West Africa” for his PhD, Ben has travelled to West Africa several times, “recently to lead an expedition in search of the enigmatic Liberian Greenbul (a species that was described in the early 1980s, but which – partly thanks to blood samples I collected in Liberia – we now know was never a valid species).”

And after stints in Cambridge, England and Corvallis, Oregon, Ben has found himself in Salvador, Brazil, where he says “the incredible biodiversity of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and Caatinga is sure to keep me occupied for years!” And that biodiversity includes, of course pelagic snails that might wash up on the beach:

I was walking with my wife and dog along a beach in Salvador and started to notice beautiful little blue sea snails (Janthina) washed up along the tideline. I’d left my smartphone at home for safety, but luckily my wife had hers and I was able to document a few of the snails. I had heard about these ocean wanderers, but this was the first time I was lucky enough to see one...There were also some small Portuguese Men o’ War washed up, which is one of the prey species of Janthina, and some shells which I took to be from a gastropod. In fact, the shells were from a deep-water, bioluminescing squid-like creature called Spirula, which is the only member of its Order.

Look closely at Ben’s snail photos and you will notice a mass of bubblies by the shell’s opening - this is its “bubble raft,” which the animal uses to stay afloat in the open ocean. It “collects” the bubbles in transparent layers of chiton and, as Ben notes, “incredibly, for a species that spends its life on the open sea, the adults can’t swim. If they get detached from their bubble raft, they’ll sink and die.” The snails do feed on hydrozoans like the Portuguese Man o’ War and By-the-wind Sailor and like many other marine life are countershaded - one side of the shell is dark purple, the other whitish.

“The feeling of contributing to something bigger is the main thing that attracted me to [iNaturalist],” says Ben (above, checking out some large fungi in Oregon). “I like being able to learn more about the species I encounter, and it makes me especially happy to know that my observations become part of GBIF and can be used by researchers worldwide.” He’s also begun adding old observations from his time in Africa and admits “I spend probably more time than I should adding identifications. I tend to focus on birds in Brazil, but occasionally dabble in other taxa and regions as well. It’s especially satisfying to find and correct misidentifications. I have definitely learned a lot through doing this.”

- by Tony Iwane. Photo of Ben Phalan by Luciana Leite.

- You can find Ben’s publications here. 

- You want to watch a Janthina snail make a bubble raft, right?

- Ben still manages BioBlitz projects in Corvallis, Oregon from Brazil, like this one! 

If you have posted a bird, dragonfly, or damselfly observation to iNaturalist, odds are that former law enforcement officer and lifelong nature enthusiast Greg Lasley (@greglasley) has added an identification to it. With over 262,000 IDs made for over 13,000 users, Greg is iNaturalist’s current top identifier (@aguilita is a close second) and he has shared a lifetime of knowledge and experience with our with iNaturalist community. The humility and generosity of many in the iNaturalist community really is wonderful.

I had the opportunity to interview Greg this past April during the “Southwest Texas iNat-a-thon” and we discussed his experience with nature photography, how iNaturalist has changed the way he photographs wildlife, and about his ID contributions. A humble man, Greg didn’t have too much to say about that last topic but it was great to hear how he has found a home for decades worth of photographic slides and how documenting species for iNaturalist has changed his habits and objectives when out in the field. Check out the interview below, and look for @briangooding, iNat’s top Odonata identifier, in a brief cameo.

An Interview with @greglasley from iNaturalist on Vimeo.

And here are some related links:

- Greg’s professional nature photography page.

-  An Observation of the Week post we wrote about Greg in 2016.

- A Texas Parks and Wildlife video that features Greg at about 3:30.