Become a Field Researcher with Your Phone: tracking rare species with iNaturalist

When we download an app like iNaturalist, many of us do so because we want an app that quickly tells us what plants and animals we see. It's a handy tool for identifying weeds in the garden or critters in the forest. But when we make iNaturalist observations, we create a data point with photographs and time and place information.
It turns out, that information can be useful to researchers. Can be.
We meet a group of researchers urging people to use iNaturalist to help a small butterfly. Brian Innouye is a biologist at Florida State University. He rides his bike through the Munson Sandhills region of the Apalachicola National Forest in search of sundial lupine. This is the larval host for the frosted elfin, the plant its caterpillars eat. If more people find the plant, that's more potential locations for a butterfly that has all but disappeared from its range. Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee is a partner on this project.
We also searched for a rare bee, the sandhills cellophane bee, to add data points to the Florida Natural Areas Inventory database of species of concern. Not only do we add datapoints to the database using iNaturalist, but FNAI biologist Dave Almquist uses iNaturalist data to create a map of potential locations for the bee.
You can see our search for the bee in the video. And you can learn more about what makes a quality iNaturalist observation, both in the video and in more depth on the WFSU Ecology Blog: blog.wfsu.org/blog-coastal-he...

[@ciestermr1848]

QUALITY CONTENT

[@ruthpalsson6930]

Very interesting, thanks.

[@CambrianAquarium]

I love using iNaturalist