Our Observation of the Week is this group of cockroaches, seen in Mozambique by @ldacosta!

As a child, Luis da Costa said he “wanted to ‘treat’ animals, mostly big magic mammals like tigers, lions, or elephants - as a lot of children I guess, I wanted to be a vet. But later, still young boy, I realised that I preferred to study ALL animals to get a global overview and to understand their connections.” Eventually he got into bird watching and and finally fish. “I am currently focusing my research on taxonomy & systematics of freshwater fishes (mostly southern African and south-western European species). But still believing that my work will help to protect them by helping to refine their conservation status.”

And it was while walking to a pond in Mozambique that he noticed the group of cockroaches you see above. However, neither fish nor cockroaches were the organisms they were looking for while on that trail… “We (team members and rangers) were mostly listening all noises around us to be "ready" if an elephant appeared on the path and decided to use it as an escape way,” recalls Luis.  “We saw several dungs, so they were around.

Of course, while walking we observed everything (flora, insects, birds, mammals). And I saw these cockroaches!!! They were resting on the tree about chest height. Quite an amazing circle, and more amazing was when they moved by circle everytime I approached my hand to their position. But they never run away. After 2-3 minutes I left them alone. In the way back they were gone!!!

Cockroaches, along with termites, are members of the insect order Blattodea. Termites, of course, famously live in colonies and demonstrate eusocial behavior. Cockroaches don’t have such complex social lives but they do posssess aggregation behaviors, especially when younger. I reached out to Eddie Dunbar (@eddiebug) of the Insect Sciences Museum of California for any insight he might have into the behavior shown in Luis’s observation, and he told me that they were likely hatchlings, using pheremones to regulate their behavior:

The aggregation probably at one time mimicked a poisonous plant. There's a lot of mimics mimicking a model that has gone extinct...I think the photograph depicts aggregation behavior not uncommon with many arthropods. Spider hatchlings in the genus Araneus form a ball and disperse over time.

Because they are considered pests, German cockroaches are a cockroach species that has been extensively studied, and Eddie pointed me to this paper, which describes their “pre-social” aggregation behavior and the efforts of scientists to create robots which mimic said behavior - very cool!

“I always registered my observations in a spreadsheet. Not really fun though,” says Luis (above, photographing an Orchis anthropophora. With the growth of citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist, he’s begun to post his findings online and says he uses iNat as a “public spreadsheet” for his casual bird observations, which he can then check from anywhere. He explains,

I really enjoy to share my photos and I look forward for iNaturalist community identification. I think the key word is "to share" with the community and not to keep these observations for myself or in the drawer.

- by Tony Iwane.

- iNat user @luisguillermog found a similar array of caterpillars in Mexico, which was our Observation of the Week for August 18, 2017.

- Eddie shared this video with me, which depicts termites following lines drawn in ballpoint pen ink. The ink is similar to their pheremones.

- While most people think of cockroaches as pests, note that only four species (of over 4,500) are considered to be major pests for humans.

- “Milk” from a certain species of cockroach has been found to be incredibly packed with nutrients.

iNat is a great resource for collecting occurrence data, and some are even using it to collect behavioral data, but what about...goat molting data?

That’s exactly what Dr. Katarzyna “Kate” Nowak (@katzyna), a Fellow at The Safina Center, and Dr. Joel Berger,  a Professor at Colorado State University, are attempting with their Mountain Goat Molting Project, on both iNaturalist and CitSci.org. “What we are planning is to explore the relationship between climatic warming and coat shedding in mountain goats across their range and over as many decades as possible,” says Dr. Nowak.

Our project will rely on citizen photography. We are after goat photos that are time and location stamped and clearly show shed phase (can be pre- or post-molt so not limited to molt phase). Ideally, but not required, photo resolution is high (300 dpi), and scanned images from film are of course welcome.

Using software, they will then map the goat’s fur (see above) and determine how much of its winter coat is left. By referencing the dates and locations of each photo, Nowak and Berger can begin to understand the effects of climate change on the mountains’ denizens.  

Kate has already found about eighty usable photos on iNaturalist and will be searching archives at Glacier and Denali National Parks as well as Yukon College more images. And throughout the summer she’ll travel in the Yukon to photograph goats, as citizen science photos from that part of the animal’s range are scarce (see below).

“Behind the project - which I should say we are only just starting - is a transdisciplinary team of people,” explains Dr. Nowak. They are working with Greg Newman from CitSci.org, Kate’s sister Joanna who is a professional photographer, and Shane Richards, an ecological modeler who works for both the Australian government (CSIRO) and the University of Tasmania.

While this project has just begun, and might seem a bit niche at first glance, Kate says it’s just the first step towards a goal of “[engaging] people on the topic of climate change in a new way and [to] also evaluate if we can track change over time using citizen photography.”

It’s awesome to see everyone out there finding new and innovative uses of iNaturalist, so if you would like to support this project, please submit your photos of Mountain Goats (Oreamnos americanus) to iNaturalist and license them for Creative Commons usage, and they will show up in the Mountain Goat Molt Project.  

- by Tony Iwane

- The Mountain Goat Molt project is supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.

- Top photo by Steve Wagner, CC BY-NC. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8803799.

- If you or someone you know is utilizing iNaturalist in a creative way, definitely share in the comments below!

Our Observation of the Week is the first Red Handfish (and only handfish of any kind) posted to iNaturalist! It was seen off of Tasmania by @acanthaster.

“Learning to dive was without a doubt one of the best decisions of my life and has taken my love for the natural world to a whole new level underwater,” says Phil Malin (@acanthaster). “The incredible interactions that you can have with a multitude of species on every dive never gets old for me.” And part of Phil’s diving experience has been searching for and photographing the rare handfish.

Handfish - members of the family Brachionichthyidae - are actually a type of anglerfish, the deep sea versions of which have become justifiably famous for their strange appearance and for the “lures” they use to attract prey. You can clearly see this structure in Phil’s photo, but the organs that give handfish their names - both common and scientific - are of course the amazing hand-like pectoral fins. While a handfish can use its tail to swim in short bursts, it relies on the pectoral fins to “walk” along the seafloor where it lives. Because these fish are mainly sedentary and don’t move very far, they usually live in small population clusters. In fact, a new population of Red Handfish were recently discovered off of Tasmania, doubling the known world population to a total of around eighty individuals. Handfishes live exclusively in the Australian region.

Being such a rare type of fish, handfish have been a sought after species for Phil to photograph. In 2008, he and a friend “spent an uncomfortable 80 mins diving in a cold, dirty river and I actually managed to photograph [a Spotted Handfish]. At the time, there were almost no photos of this species, so this was quite a find for me to photograph.”

He was able to photograph a Red Handfish in 2010 (see below) with the help of a friend and a woman who works with the fish, and  

Since then, I have followed the usual progression as a semi-serious underwater photographer to upgrade my equipment to something with a much higher resolution and have been keen to head back and shoot the Red Handfish again. A few weeks ago I finally managed to find some time down in Tasmania to go for my Handfish hunt. Thankfully I managed to find one about 15 minutes into the dive, when I was still warm and functional.  The conditions were very good, so this shot is substantially better than my last effort. Once you manage to hit them with enough light, their eyes glow a beautiful gem blue colour, which I think looks incredible. My next challenge is to re-shoot the Spotted Handfish in a higher resolution too.

Phil began to upload some of his fantastic fish photos to iNaturalist after Mark McGrouther (@markmcg), who runs the Australasian Fishes project on iNat, suggested he do so.

I am a regular diver on a part of the Australian coastline that doesn’t really have a lot of good observational data in the last decade, so I felt that I should start putting some of my photos to good use. iNaturalist has certainly made me more focussed on certain dives where I am attempting to shoot one of everything for a local species list. It is amazing how some common species that I usually don’t attempt to photograph are actually incredibly hard to shoot well. The Eastern Wirrah is a classic example of this. Challenges like this now inspire me to try and shoot good ID profile shots of these species as cleanly as possible.

I think citizen science projects such as iNaturalist will play an important role heading forward as climate change really starts to make a significant impact on species distribution.  I am hoping I can continue to make a contribution in this space for many years to come.

- by Tony Iwane

- Check out this short video about the discovery of this new Red Handfish population.

- The Australasian Fishes project has been a great boon for iNat participation in Australia. Look at the growth of Australian observations after it got started in 2016! If you’re an underwater photographer, we’d love to have more fish photos!

Our (City Nature Challenge) Observation of the Week is this Orobanche plant, seen in Italy by @finrod!

From April 27th - 30th of this year, sixty-nine cities took part in a worldwide friendly competition to get outside and document the wildlife around them - the City Nature Challenge! Rome was one of those cities, the World Wildlife Fund organized a bioblitz of the Parco di Centocelle, site of the first airport in Italy. While it had long been an area in disrepair and is still struggling with some environmental issues, iNat user (and bioblitz participant) Stefano Doglio - aka finrod - says “it's an important green area for the crowded, working class neighborhoods around it.”

While participating in this bioblitz, Stefano photographed the very cool plant you see above (and below). While there’s some disagreement over exactly which species it is, the plant is a member of Orobanche, a genus of about 200 completely parasitic plants. When not in bloom, these plants are entirely underground, slurping water and nutrients from the roots of other plants. The flowers and their stalks do break the surface of the soil and are often colored yellow, white, or blue-purple. Leaves are tiny and lack chlorophyll, so there is no green at all on these plants. Which is kind of awesome. Some species are only able to parasitize certain plants while other are generalists, and Orobanche ramosa is even considered to be an agricultural pest.

In English, Orobanches have the unfortunate common name of “broomrapes,” but the blog In Defense of Plants tells us:

in this context, rape stems from the Latin word “rapum,” which roughly translates to “tuber” or “turnip.” Broom is an English word that, in this context, refers to a shrubby plant related to vetch, which is often parasitized by broomrapes. So, the literal meaning of broomrape is something akin to “broom tuber.”

Whatever you call them, these are glorious, bizarre plants.

While he now lives in Rome, Stefano is from a small village in the Cottian Alps, near Italy’s border with France and says he he has “always” been interested in nature and the outdoors. “My current interests and research are ecology and biogeography of the Mediterranean region (to Central Asia),” he says. “Amphibians, and to a lesser extent orchids are my main interests taxonomy wise.”

Interestingly, Stefano says that he long ago made his own natural history observations database application, which

had been missing it until I found iNat (I first heard of it at the Mediterranean herpetology congress in Marrakech back in 2011, I think), [which is] even better because this way all this info doesn't just sit idly in a hard disk (or gather dust in a forgotten notebook) but can be shared and possibly be useful for others, for our collective knowledge... I gather and upload more observations that I wouldn't have collected if they had then just stayed in my hd/notebook.

- by Tony Iwane

- You can check out Stefano’s ResearchGate page as well some of his other photos on CalPhotos.

-  Stefano also worked on a free book - Jbel Sarhro – Maroc Projet d'établissement d'un Parc National - which you can download in French and Italian here. It stems from a project that is “trying to set up a new national park in Morocco's Anti-Atlas.” 

- Over 1,700 Orobanche sp. plants have been posted to iNaturalist - check them out here! 

Our Observation of the Week is this encounter between a wolf spider and a Tawny Mole Cricket, seen in Louisiana by @audubon23!

“A friend and I were visiting the trails in Couturie Forest in City Park, New Orleans to see which species of birds would be active in mid-April,” recalls Anna (audubon23). They stumbled into a new (to them) area of the park with two large concrete circles, which they later discovered were old model airplane courts (visible via satellite photos).

I noticed the mole cricket sitting out on one of the concrete circles in the middle of the day, [and] I didn’t notice the wolf spider until I bent down because the spider was so comparably small...The spider allowed me to get very close with my camera. There was no way would he relinquish this cricket to this camera lady. He earned it.

What happened here? Mole crickets tend to stay in their burrows during the day, so Anna thinks “that the cricket was out at night or early morning when the spider ambushed and injected its venom, and then the pair sat there together for hours until I discovered them in early afternoon...I would love to have seen the spider subdue and immobilize the cricket. It must have been quite a feat.” Spiders need to liquefy the insides of their prey before consumption, and Anna believes “the spider didn’t even make a dent in liquefying and digesting the cricket.”

One of the more bizarre-looking of the Orthoptera, mole crickets are found over much of the world and are well-adapted to a life of burrowing underground. Their forelimbs are paddle-shaped and excellent for digging, while their back legs are used to pushing dirt rather than jumping. Male mole crickets will even use the entrance of their burrow as a horn to amplify their calls at night, and females will fly to them. Some mole crickets are herbivorous, like the Tawny Mole Cricket, while others are omnivorous or even predatory. Tawny Mole Crickets are native to South America and have become agricultural pests in North America since being accidentally introduced there in 1900. 

Mole crickets face quite a few predators, with wolf spiders being an important one. Unlike many other spiders, wolf spiders do not spin webs. Rather, most amble along the ground and either chase or pounce on prey, while others make burrows underground. They are fast, often nocturnal, and have excellent eyesight. If you’re ever out in the woods in North America and are using a headlamp, look for small yet powerful green eye shine on the ground - these are likely from wolf spiders.

Anna (above) has been interested in nature since her childhood, and “began volunteering at the zoo in New Orleans at age 12 as a ‘Junior Keeper’ in the education department, and I eventually became an intern for their Louisiana wetlands education-outreach vehicle. That helped to further my passion for Gulf Coast wildlife.” She’s a recent college graduate and says she’s “still working out how I want to continue my education and career and what areas of research I want to pursue.”

And of iNaturalist, Anna writes

I use iNaturalist for documenting the wildlife I encounter, and it has really changed the way I interact with the natural world. I pay much more attention to what I see and hear than I used to. I want to identify everything now! It has also made me much more aware of my community’s biodiversity. I am more familiar with what is around me and how it all interacts.

It is wonderful how it connects people of different locations and levels of expertise and experience. I really love the concept of crowd-sourced data collection on wildlife. It really makes me feel like I am contributing to something much bigger than myself. It engages people and actually helps real science. It doesn’t get much cooler than that.

- by Tony Iwane

- Female wolf spiders famously carry around both their egg sacs and their new hatchlings with them as they walk. 

- Meet Steinernema scapterisci, a nematode worm that kills mole crickets (and other hosts) by infecting them!

Our Observation of the Week is this Clathrus cage fungus, seen in Colombia by @linaforero!

Lina Forero has been interested in the natural world ever since she was a child, and says that this “is why I am now a wildlife veterinarian [at Universidad de La Salle] and work in the conservation of ecosystems.”

It was while she and some friends were scouting an area for another citizen science project (eBird’s Global Big Day on May 5th) that they came across the structural wonder seen above. “We had never seen anything like it,” she says, “so we thought that in iNaturalist someone could help us identify it, in the suggestions of identification we read the characteristics of these fungi and we were amazed.”

Red cage fungi, part of the Phallaceae or “stinkhorn” family of mushrooms, are a truly wondrous group of organisms. When first emerging from the ground, they look like many other mushrooms, with an off-white volva sticking up through the substrate. However, that volva soon bursts open and the red cage structure of the mature mushroom slowly expands upward. The inside of the cage is full of a brownish goo called the gleba, which is were the spores develop. Smelling like rotting flesh, the gleba of a Red Cage fungus attracts flies, which land on it and distribute the spores that sticking to their feet. Red Cage fungi are often found on mulch and wood chips.

Lina (above) has an NGO called Fundación Camana Conservación y territorio, and uses iNaturalist for the FOTOCANEY project run by the foundation, partnering with “group of children with whom we work environmental education topics.” She says she personally uses iNat “in my trips where I record the observations of species that I do not know and from which I want to learn.”

- by Tony Iwane

- More amazing Clathrus time lapse! This one is Clathrus archeri, or “Devils Fingers.”

- iNaturalist’s partner site Naturalista Colombia helped organize Bogota’s City Nature Challenge project this year, and so far nearly 8,000 observations have been uploaded!  

Guest post by City Nature Challenge co-organizer Lila Higgins (@lhiggins) from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County .

We’re excited to launch the third City Nature Challenge, which involves thousands of participants from 69 metropolitan areas around the world. And 64 of these areas will be using iNaturalist to document biodiversity.

Over the next four days, each city is in friendly competition to see who can get the most people involved to record the most observations of the most species. All 64 projects using iNaturalist are in the umbrella project for City Nature Challenge 2018 so you can see how the cities stack up in real time as the observations come in.

If you’re in one of these metropolitan areas, get outside and start observing biodiversity (preferably the wild stuff)!

Even if you aren’t, you can still help. We expect half a million observations from 10,000 people, so there will be plenty of new observations to identify and new people to welcome. If you’re logged in to your iNaturalist account, check out all of the City Nature Challenge observations that still need IDs. You can filter from there based on your interest and expertise. Here’s a short tutorial video for the Identify page to get you started.

Observations must be made by April 30th but can still be uploaded and identified during May 1-3. The final tally from each project will be recorded at 9 AM local time on Friday, May 4, with the results announced after the 9 AM in Maui tally is made. More detailed results will be shared on Monday, May 7.

How It All Started: Los Angeles Versus San Francisco

In 2016, Alison Young (@kestrel) from the California Academy of Sciences and I came up with an idea to celebrate the first ever national Citizen Science Day at our museums. We decided to turn the documentation of nature in our respective cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, into a competition. We capitalized on our cities’ long-standing rivalry -- the Dodgers versus the Giants (debatable), which city has the best burritos (clearly L.A.), and which city has the highest rents (not funny) -- and encouraged Angelenos and San Franciscans to get outside and document nature.

In just 7 days, over 1,000 people submitted almost 20,000 observations to the challenge! Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti got involved and sent in his own picture of a common garden snail to the project. Other, more rare species were also documented. In Los Angeles, our famous yet elusive mountain lion, P-22, showed up on a camera trap in Griffith Park to be counted for the challenge. In San Francisco, two iconic endangered species were documented including the Mission blue butterfly and San Francisco Garter Snake. But, it wasn’t just L.A. and San Francisco residents paying attention, urban nature lovers all over the United States were following the challenge too. Many wanted to join in the fun.

(P.S.: Los Angeles won!)

And So It Grew

Capitalizing on the buzz, we expanded the challenge to cover the entire United States. In 2017, 16 cities across the country took part. From Miami to New York, from Dallas to Seattle, 14 new cities joined in, all trying to take Los Angeles down. In just 5 short days, around 4,000 people submitted over 125,000 observations of wildlife living in U.S. urban areas. Orcas were spotted off the coast of Seattle, a critically imperiled Bartram’s scrub-hairstreak butterfly was documented in Miami, and once again, mountain lion P-22 showed up for Los Angeles. A total of 8,629 species were documented, including 393 rare, endangered, or threatened species. There was one species seen in every single city -- that tenacious urban dweller, the pigeon! And in the end Dallas, Texas won for the most number of observations, with almost 25,000!

From the very beginning, we both said we were starting off with L.A and San Francisco, but that we’d go national in 2017, and international in 2018. Setting goals is something we’re pretty good at, but we didn’t necessarily believe it would expand as rapidly as it has.

This year the City Nature Challenge involves 69 cities, from 17 countries, on 5 continents, and organizers in each city have developed partnerships with over 300 organizations. Although we can’t be certain that we’ll meet this year’s projected 10,000 participants and 500,000 observations, we’ve been pretty good at predicting results in past years. What nature will we find in our cities this year? Will participants in Mumbai document the charismatic leopards that live in their city? How many rare, endangered, and threatened species will we document? Will kids in both Tokyo and London submit pictures of honeybees? Will pigeons be found in every city, just like they were in 2017? With people all over the world taking part in the City Nature Challenge this year, being curious and observant and documenting the nature that is local to them, we’re bound to find some surprises!

Join the challenge, help your city win, and most importantly help us better understand nature in our cities.

You can read more by Lila Higgins at the Nature in L.A. Blog.

Our Observation of the Week is this Conops thick-headed fly, seen in Belgium by @henkwallays2!

A naturalist who was first interested in amphibians (especially salamanders), Henk Wallays has been photographing wildlife for a long time now - “Most [amphibian] images...date from before the digital age (like me ;-) and are on slide,” he says - and has recently become interested in macro photography. “I have also started to appreciate the nature from my neighbourhood  and took up the idea of going for photographic inventories…mainly on the smaller animals. I am very keen on photographing solitary bees for the last 5 years now , but I tend to make shots of almost anything that passes in front of my lens. The purpose being to make sharp images depicting the animals with as much detail as possible.” Describing his macro photography as a “hobby that kind of went out of hand,” Henk always brings his camera and twin flash gear with him wherever he goes.

One place he tries to visit every year is the Viroin region of Belgium, “which is known for its rich biodiversity...There are so many different insect and plant species in the various nature reserves out there which I can not find elsewhere.” It was on a visit there in 2009 when he found the awesome Conops fly pictured above. “During this trip we actually found some new solitary bee species which I had not seen before and then there was this Conops,” he recalls. “Although we do from time to find Conops where I live, this animal just posed so nice that I had to make the shot.”

The beautiful, nectar-sipping adult form of the Conops fly belies its somewhat savage life cycle. Female Conops flies will often attack bees, especially bumblebees, in mid-air and spread open the segments of the bee’s abdomen, where they will deposit an egg. Once the egg hatches, the larva will feed on the hemolymph (blood) of the host before slowly devouring its internal organs and eventually killing the host. It will then pupate inside the dead bee and emerge in the spring.

Henk (who wanted to share his photo of a rare Epeoloides coecutiens bee rather than one of himself) found out about iNaturalist just over a week ago and is “currently busy uploading some of the older material.” He says that “although my experience with iNaturalist is short I kind of appreciate this platform a lot. Especially the fact that you are supported in having the right name tag on the animals or plants; either by (great) automated support (working well for plants specifically) and not the least also by other people helping out in those areas where I am not that familiar about (thanks for all of them who so far helped me out).”

“For now my image library is really too big and needs some clean up, it counts well over 150,000 shots on more than 3,000 species of animals, plants, [etc.],” says Henk. “And I hope to continue expanding it with more and better shots along the way.”

He’s passionate about contributing his sightings to different databases such as iNaturalist, AmphibiaWeb (where his old salamander photos have been uploaded), and Belgium’s own database. “So now in the field,” he explains, “you actually see me enter the observations twice on the cell phone, once for iNaturalist & once for Belgium.”

- by Tony Iwane

- Check out Henk’s photo gallery!

- Here are two videos of adult Conops at rest. Great looks at their halteres, which enable flies to be such awesome aerial acrobats.

We’ve introduced some new functionality for projects on iNaturalist! One of the most-requested features related to projects is the ability to *automatically* include all observations in a particular place or taxon across all time and in a continuously updating manner. Unfortunately, associating observations with projects has been a computationally expensive process, so we have limited “the aggregator” to a small subset of trusted projects, or to time-bound bioblitz projects, to protect site performance.  Another common request is the ability to associate two or more projects together under an umbrella, such as all of the projects associated with a single organization.

Starting next week, users can create two new types of projects using automatic collection and umbrella projects. Here’s what the page will generally look like when you go to create a new project (some text will still change):

We can convert many existing projects to the new ‘collection’ project type, providing that its parameters match those on Observations Search, such as taxa, places, dates, and users. We are not able to convert projects that have a “Must be on list” rule. Existing projects that meet the criteria above can be converted to the new ‘collection’ project type by project administrators when you go to edit your project by contacting help+projects@inaturalist.org with the URL of the project you would like to convert (updated on 4/25/18).

Existing projects (let’s call them traditional) came in several flavors.  Most (82%) are ‘regular’ with a significant minority (12%) as ‘bioblitz’. A tiny fraction (<4%) were some experimental project types that never really worked well.

The vast majority of projects are created for one of these purposes:

1. Run a BioBlitz (i.e. collect all observations within space and time boundaries).


2. Collect interesting observations which couldn’t otherwise be found using Observations Search (e.g. Amazing Aberrants, Observation of the Day).


3. Gain access to true locations of obscured/private observations and/or filter observations identified by project curators.


4. Collect additional data using observation fields.


5. Create a repository of all observations for a place and/or taxon that can be branded, shared, and used for outreach (e.g. to encourage participation in a park or observations of specific taxa).


6. For educators to assemble observations made by students.

The status quo for projects has been especially difficult for the last two purposes. The limits on the aggregator have been frustrating for people who want all observations from a given place and/or taxon continuously updated. As a result, project owners, managers, and/or curators have had to manually add observations or rely on users to add their observations themselves. Educators have had to rely on students adding their observations to a specific project, which is laborious for the students and/or the educators. New ‘collection’ projects should be an improvement for both of these purposes because you can use standard search parameters to automatically include observations by date added or observed, place, or user (and more).

For example, a professor could add the usernames of all of her students to a project that will automatically capture all observations made and added to iNaturalist during the semester. Then all student observations from the entire semester will be easily visible for her review, enabling her to ensure that the observations are appropriate and identified.

These changes were made in advance of the upcoming City Nature Challenge (organized by the citizen science teams at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences), which is a perfect use case for an umbrella project. Sixty-four different metropolitan areas around the world will submit observations to iNaturalist made during April 27-30. The umbrella project allows you to easily compare the numbers of observations, species, and participants across several projects at once. For an immediate sense of what it will look like since the event has not started yet, we also created an umbrella project for last year’s City Nature Challenge.

In the near future we plan to include the ability to use observation annotations as additional project parameters, e.g. to only pull in observations from a particular insect life stage. We plan to combine this feature with improvements to the observation search filters tool.

As with any new features, there are always trade offs, and we know that these new projects will not work for all projects and needs.  Here are some major differences with new, collection projects (compared to traditional projects):

• Collection projects do not provide access to private and obscured coordinates for project admins.


• No links on individual observations to the collection projects in which they are included.


• No ability to associate additional observation fields with collection projects (fields can still be added to individual observations).

Once we open the new project creation tool, everyone who goes to create a project will be offered a choice between creating a ‘collection’ or ‘umbrella’ style project. If you want to create a traditional project because you need one of the features lacking in the new collection projects, there will be a link to the old project creation page. The aggregator will also be disabled for new ‘traditional’ projects. Eventually we hope to phase out the creation of new ‘traditional’ projects, but we are aware that the aforementioned needs must be addressed (especially access to private and obscured coordinates). We are exploring other approaches to those needs.

The iNaturalist staff have created (or converted from existing) a few projects for you to explore. Please let us know if you encounter any problems with these as we prepare to fully release the functionality.

Examples:

City Nature Challenge 2018 (umbrella with 64 projects)

City Nature Challenge 2017 (umbrella with 16 projects)

Southwest Texas iNat-a-thon (collection with 23 users over 4 days)

Below you can see the design of the project creation page for new ‘collection’ projects (note: the text below will be updated for consistency with the descriptions above).

Our Observation of the Week is this group of Pitcher Plant Mining Moths, seen in Mississippi by @misspt!

The inside of a carnivorous plant is not the first place one would think of to look for (living) insects, but that’s exactly where Pitcher Plant Mining Moths thrive, as iNat user Lillian Gibb (misspt) documented in her photo (above).

Lillian saw the flower while on an outing with the Mississippi Naturalists Facebook group. “We were fortunate to have about 15 people from 3 different states and multiple areas of interest participate in an outing to the DeSoto National Forest area called Buttercup Flats.” It’s a restored Longleaf Pine Savanna ecosystem, which Lillian says “receives the routine burning that allows the ecosystem to flourish.  

This particular area is a pitcher plant bog and we specifically were able to find and identify 7 different types of carnivorous plants. We also saw several other organisms specialized to the Longleaf Pine Savanna besides the Pitcher Plant Mining Moth, including Bachman's Sparrow, Henslow's Sparrow, and Polygala nana.

As their common name suggests, the larvae of this moth host on the leaves of pitcher plants, which are carnivorous. After hatching, the larvae consume the leaf flesh in a pattern several grooves near the top of the leaf. This causes the upper part of the leaf to stop growing, and it forms a hard cap over the top, protecting the larva from predators. The flesh of the leave below the grooves remains fresh and growing, providing them food.

As adults, these moths spend much of the day sheltering on the inside of pitcher plant leaves, their feet specially designed to not slide on the slippery, downward-facing hairs that cause other insects to meet their doom. They always face upright when in the leaf, even backing in from the top. And while most moths face away from each other when copulating, Pitcher Plant Mining Moths mate at a ninety-degree angle so they don’t fall to their deaths!

Lillian (above, looking at carnivorous plants) grew up in Kemper County, Mississippi, and was always interested in the outdoors, and says “the first time I really connected with recording and understanding nature was in sixth grade completing a wildflower project in which I brought in the largest number of species by far as compared to my classmates.  My science teachers in ongoing grades helped continue to encourage my scientific endeavors with hands on learning.”

After fifteen years of working on her career and raising her family, she says she took up birding as a hobby, and calls the Longleaf Pine Savanna (and birds) her focus.

Of iNaturalist, she says

[it] has been extremely helpful with clarifying IDs, improving my ID abilities and helping me map my certain areas of interest, particularly Pitcher Plants a threatened/near threatened species. In Mississippi, we are working on trying to interest and involve more of our naturalists. We have so many people with amazing knowledge areas, but they still need a little convincing regarding the benefit of long term online observations that become part of a larger ongoing record.

If you’re a Mississippian who’s into nature, we’d love to see more observations from your state!

- by Tony Iwane

- Moths aren’t the only arthropods that take advantage of pitcher plants!

- Some cool Pitcher Plant Mining Moth info.