And now what?

Good Morning Africa.

Instructions for Identification Phase of GSB22

So the data collection phase for GSB22 is done. And hopefully everyone doing marathon bioblitz sessions has now recovered.
Very many thanks to everyone who participated. I trust it was fun, exciting and you learned lots!

Most participants will have loaded their observations by now. Only the heavyweights and those with urgent meetings wont have uploaded yet. If you have any outstanding observations to load, please do so soonest.

This means that the city rankings by observations should more or less have stabilized - only minor shuffling is likely.

However, the number of species is still totally up in the air, because most identifications must still be done.

And it is time to start with the identifications.

If you are able to help, it would be most useful. How?

The major immediate task is to get the observations that are vaguely identified to levels where specialists can get to see them.

• If you are a total beginner then putting observations to ants, bees, butterflies, daisies, peas and grasses will be very useful.
• If you are more experienced, then skip the observations that you do not know for others and move the unknowns to family, genus and species.

Because identifiers work in areas, it makes sense to group users into similar areas. For ease of use, I have done, East Africa, Savanna, Grasslands and Fynbos regions. (note that some areas are in more than one). If you wish to work only in your city, you will need to tweak the settings yourself: but there are far fewer specialists than observers, and identification should be collective rather than competitive.

The most efficient way of doing this is to use the identification tool. How it works can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/246153496
Some tips:

• Dont forget to use the popup screen
• Skip over the ones you do not know
• Mark any pot plants or planted garden plants or captive animals are Captive/Cultivated (tick box)
• If you find an observation with lots of species photos, please ask the observer to discombobulate them: there is a proforma you can copy and paste below.
• When you are finished with a page (usually 30 observations), mark them all as reviewed before going to the next page.
• DONT FORGET TO FAVE THE BEST OBSERVATIONS - as many as you like, for our Observation of GSB22!! (tick box)

So: please help! Choose your level and get identifying!

Task One: BASIC

These need basic identification (all regions) Help with basic identifications by clicking here
Special note on handlingTrees (see here)

Task Two: INTERMEDIATE

These need identification to family level or lower.
Help with basic Animals identifications by clicking here
Help with basic Plant identifications by clicking here
Help with basic Fungi identifications by clicking here

These two tasks are the most urgent, and need to be cleared soonest, so that the specialists can get started.
Summary statistics are provided below.

Done a whole lot?
Bored?
Then why not see our FAVES so far!!
To support an observation with your vote, click on the picture to open the observation - the Fave button is just below the map - just click the star.

NEXT

It is too early for specialists to be seriously involved. Hopefully by Thursday we will have sufficiently cleared the above tasks for the specialists.

Updated Friday 4th!

Task Three: SPECIALISTS

ID needed below family level
Help with identifying Birds to species level by clicking here
Help with identifying Mammals to species level by clicking here
Help with identifying Herps to species level by clicking here
Help with identifying Fish to species level by clicking here

Help with identifying Invertebrates in e & c Africa to species level by clicking here
Help with identifying Invertebrates in s Africa to species level by clicking here

Help with identifying Fungi & Lichens to species level by clicking here

PLANTS:
We suggest that you put in your favourite families in the 'species' box and process them first.
Help with identifying Cape Flora Plants
Help with identifying Grassveld Plants
Help with identifying Southern Savanna Plants
Help with identifying Desert Flora Plants
Help with identifying Central & East African Plants
Help with identifying Flora Zambesiaca Plants

Posted on November 2, 2022 06:38 AM by tonyrebelo