City Nature Challenge 2021: South Florida (#CNCSOFLO)'s Journal

Hi everyone!

Thank you for all of your contributions last year. We hope you had a blast bioblitzing South Florida and looking through all of the amazing observations our team posted.

The 2022 City Nature Challenge starts on Friday, April 29th and ends on Monday, May 2nd... it's right around the corner! We would love for you to join our new project and try to mark down a day (or several days) that you can go out and observe some of the amazing biodiversity in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties. Here is a link to the CNC SoFlo project for 2022:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022-south-florida-cncsoflo

Make sure to also check out the events that are being updated daily on our CNC SoFlo website:
https://www.cncsoflo.com/

Keep in mind you don't need to wait until the CNC to post observations on iNaturalist! It's never a bad time to poke around your neighborhood or your local park in search of wild organisms. Remember that everything you post goes into a public database that strengthens our understanding of where and when you can find different organisms! If you manage to get out to one of our National Parks or other wild areas, make sure to also snap a few photos to document what you find :-)

One more thing, make sure to follow our Instagram for some fun South Florida biodiversity content, including quizzes and other interactive posts!
@cncsoflo

Hope to see your observations soon!
-Joe MDO and the CNC SoFlo Team

Hello CNCSOFLO Participants!

The identifying period for the City Nature Challenge wrapped up for us as the clock struck midnight on Sunday night! On behalf of all of the organizers involved in the City Nature Challenge, including Frost Science, Florida International University, Miami Eco Adventures, Miami-Dade County, and Citizens for a Better South Florida, a big thank you goes to all of the observers, identifiers and the organizations that put events together to get people outside, helping to showcase South Florida's amazing biodiversity. Our results were fantastic and we shot up across the board this year with more observations, species and participants than ever before! With the amount of competing cities almost doubling from 244 in 2020 to 419 this year, it was hard to go up in the rankings but we did improve by 7 places in the observer count category! We stayed in the same position for species count and we actually dropped 5 places in the observation count category despite posting over 2,000 more observations than last year!

2021 City Nature Challenge- SOFLO results (ranked against 419 other cities/areas)
-29th by observation count (down 5 places from 24th last year, so we actually did better compared to other cities last year)
-19th by species count (same as last year)
-22nd by observer count (up 7 places compared to last year)

You can look through the City leaderboards here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021

One of the best ways to see our improvements is by looking at some stats below, comparing this year's numbers to last year's:

Remember, these numbers will change as more observations are added (better late than never- I actually just realized I collected some shells that I forgot to photograph!). More identifications will also continue to come in as the iNaturalist community looks through observations that haven't been identified yet (in the Needs ID stage- we still have almost 4,000 observations in this stage).

Besides going up in observation count (10,327 compared to 8,518 last year), species count (1,978 compared to 1,784 last year) and observers (582 compared to 472 last year), it's also nice to see we had a much smaller percentage of Casual observations compared to last year. Casual observations include organisms that are not wild, such as landscaped, potted, and garden plants, along with pets or zoo animals. Since iNaturalist is meant to primarily document wild organisms, it's great to see that more people posted observations that translate into more useful data. We went from 36% casual observations last year to only 9% this year, so that is a huge improvement! The percent of research grade observations we posted is also higher, even though last year's observations had a whole year longer to be identified by the iNat community... 52% compared to 39% last year.

I spent a lot of time looking through our observations and wanted to highlight some that we posted:
Titan sphinx moth observed by @ethankistler
American crocodile observed by @alyssacritters
Spotted mule-ear orchid observed by @rileyfortierii
Red-winged blackbird observed by @bmasdeu
Common bottlenose dolphin observed by @genesiscg
Burrowing four o'clock observed by @lauren412
A fungi parasitizing a fly observed by @noaboa
Euphoria limbalis (endemic beetle) observed by @jaykeller
Bluegill observed by @ericrupert
Cave swallow observed by @nature_is_awesome
Coffee-loving pyrausta moth observed by @kuchipatchis
Felimare olgae (nudibranch) observed by @caporali
Slender brown scorpion observed by @raindrops
Least bittern observed by @juddpatterson
White scroll alga observed by @lt422
Florida apple snail eggs observed by @dylannt
Flat-collared beewolf observed by @eridanxharahi
Tetragnatha spider observed by @fherrerav
Goldentail moray observed by yours truly :-)

If you found anything particularly interesting, whether it's your observation or someone else's, please post a comment below (only possible on the website and not on the app).

If you'd like to share this post with anyone, here's the link:
https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/51624-city-nature-challenge-results

Thanks again for participating and don't forget to follow CNCSOFLO's official Instagram page @cncsoflo and facebook https://www.facebook.com/CNCsoflo
Be on the lookout for more info about CNCSOFLO 2022 in the following months :-D

Thanks again and see you all soon!
-Joe

Hi,

I just realized we are at 419 observers! Last year we made it to 472... can we make it to 500 observers?? Tell your friends and family to hop on the app or website and add an observation or two from today to help us have more participants than we have ever had before! You all know how fun it is to observe South Florida's biodiversity, so help spread the word!!

Thanks,
Joe

Good morning CNCSOFLO team!

Hope you have enjoyed observing all kinds of plants and critters throughout this weekend! Remember though, you can still observe more stuff today (the observing period of the challenge runs from Friday to Monday!)

Another thing to consider is that we have until Sunday, May 9th to post the observations we took between Friday and today. In other words, if you took some photos yesterday and didn't have time to post them to the iNaturalist website or app, you still have some time!

Something I will be talking more about tomorrow is identifications... You can help with that too (if you know some of the flora and fauna here in South Florida!) IDs can be added very quickly and efficiently by using the identify feature on the website and you can filter the observations to only include certain types of organisms (for example, you can just try to ID insects- or maybe corals- if that's what you know best). I gave an example of how this works during my iNaturalist presentation for the Dade chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society and you can see that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSw0q66Bl5Q&t=3071s
Feel free to comment below or e-mail me at jmont034@fiu.edu if you have any questions!
Thanks for all you do and please get some more photos before 11:59PM tonight to help boost our numbers :-)

-Joe

Good evening CNCSOFLO observers!

We are doing great so far... over 2,000 observations and climbing by the minute! All photos and audio that you take in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties between today and Monday (till 11:59PM) will count towards the challenge, as long as you post them by next Sunday. Please continue documenting our wonderful biodiversity and remember to check any porch lights at night for interesting moths and other insects! There are many different species that can be found throughout our area and you never know what you will find. Don't forget to spread the word to help us get more observers and observations in before Monday :-)

Keep up the good work South Florida!

April 30th is creeping up on us pretty quickly! We hope you are as excited as we are about documenting biodiversity all over South Florida. Are you curious about what you might find in your area? The good news is you can get a really good idea by using the "Explore" feature of the iNaturalist website or app. There are many different ways to look through the data and it's a great way to get inspired to find all kinds of organisms around you. If you are new to iNaturalist and want to learn more, clicking around the website is a good start but you can also check this PDF out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16fWrL3Ggw0CA7OkuIE_RFQemLNYZITXV/view?usp=sharing
Another good resource is available here:
http://www.cassisaari.com/inaturalist-tips-tricks/

If you use instagram, make sure to check out our page @CNCSOFLO
We're also on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CNCsoflo
And we also have a website: https://cncsoflo.jimdosite.com/

Please spread the word to any nature lovers you know as we really need this to be a team effort to really showcase how many species we have here and how much we care about our nature :-D

Hi everyone!

The CNC is around the corner! Our website is now up and we will be posting info about events soon. If you are interested in hosting an event, there is an option to register it on the site. Here is the link:
https://cncsoflo.jimdosite.com/

Please help spread the word about the City Nature Challenge to any nature-inclined folks you know! If you are still getting the hang of iNaturalist and want to learn more about posting observations or how to look through other users' posts, please join me during a presentation sponsored by the Florida Native Plant Society! It's on Tuesday at 7:30PM. You can learn more and register for this free presentation here:
https://teamup.com/event/show/id/WFvmyfMb6QPmXCp79uVe9tFB6ARE7Y

You are also welcome to join our what's app chat if you have any questions about iNaturalist or want someone to help you out with an ID:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/GkIDr5SUwog4rIql6gC1JU

One more thing... there's a really cool event happening next weekend including many free field trips around South Florida. These field trips are organized by the Florida Native Plant Society and will mostly focus on recognizing plants in different habitats throughout our area. There is a limit of 10 attendees per field trip due to Covid restrictions but several have spots open so you still have time to join one! Check out the link below to read up on the field trips and then click the link within that page to sign up for a field trip.
https://dade.fnpschapters.org/data/uploads/documents/npd2021registration.pdf

Hope to see you all on Tuesday!
-Joe