We did it!

Good morning everyone! Wow, what a weekend! Our AppState Team went all out on catching up and then some! As of yesterday, we are leading the BioBlitz! UNCG is coming in a strong second after leading for most of the week (I'm sure they are at least a little bit upset with us). UNCW pulled over the 1,000 observation mark with the highest species/observations ratio of all three campuses. Here are the current numbers:

AppState: 2,428 observations, 620 species, 97 observers (100 project members)
UNCG: 2,159 observations, 546 species, 66 observers (77 project members)
UNCW: 1,077, 423 species, 31 observers (44 project members)

The top three observers with the most overall observations uploaded so far are jaajowele at UNCG, iantb at UNCW, and kirnsc at AppState. Great job everyone!

These numbers may still change a bit as people who took pictures with cameras rather than the phone app may still be processing and uploading images. Remember the date that counts is the date the picture was taken, not when it was uploaded to iNaturalist. So if you took pictures but didn't get around to uploading them yet, there's still time to do so and make them count this week.

Another thing that will affect the numbers is identifications and curation for e.g. cultivated species. We got a good start on that already with allenma3 currently leading our list of identifiers.

Identifying species:
If you would like to help with IDs, check out the identification guidelines. We want our data to be as scientifically accurate as possible, so make sure you can independently verify the IDs you're adding (e.g. using field guides, or online sources other than the iNaturalist computer suggestions such as NameThatPlant.net). Computer Vision doesn't always get it right and can only attempt to identify what is in its training set. If you don't know what something is, it's ok to skip the ID and instead wait for someone more knowledgeable to chime in.

Marking things cultivated/not wild:
The goal of the BioBlitz is to record the wildlife on campus, so only wild organisms should count. If something is obviously not wild (e.g. domestic animals, potted plants), they should be marked "captive/cultivated" on the identify page. On the observation pages, you would do this by marking No next to "Organism is wild" near the bottom of the page.

Adding annotations:
Making annotations is another great way to add value to observations. For example, for plants you can add whether they are flowering or fruiting, or for insects whether they are larvae, pupae, or adults. These annotations are searchable and allow researchers to e.g. quickly find all the plants that were in bloom or all the caterpillars observed during this month. This is also often easy to determine even if you are not confident enough to add species IDs.

Marking your favorites:
Last but not least, if you browse the pool of observations and come across some that you think are really cool or have really great pictures, feel free to add a star to fave the observation! This will include it in the set of most popular observations from the BioBlitz and will make sure we don't miss it when we pick contenders for the best picture winners. You can use the filters or search by species to find your favorite taxa and see if anyone made observations of them.

Posted on Απρίλιος 24, 2023 1131 ΠΜ by annkatrinrose