Our Monthly Challenge continues with another splendid effort, in the last month we all contributed a massive effort. The numbers will only go up as people may upload observations in the next few weeks. As of writing, we have contributed
Observations 6, 722 (6,498 in Australia alone)
Species 2,213
Identifiers 576
Observers 65 (21 with more than 50 observations at the time of writing)
Join the 'Activating for Citizen Science' project
#Where have our been made?
© 2022_NASA, TerraMetrics
Together our 62 Australian observers accounted for around 6.7 % of all observations within Australia over the month of February (at the time of writing) while constituting only around 1.1% of all Australian iNaturalists observers active during the month.
This month the number of observations remained 100,000 Australian iNaturalist observations, the second time since September 2021 for the second time</a>, the number of observations has dropped below 100K observations this may be due to the floods along Australia's eastern seaboard and the lift on Covid 19 restrictions. This trend may continue in March as some of Australia's most prolific observers have been restricted to investigating their backyard Biodiversity. We look forward to the cooler months and many 'fungi forays', we would love to see your adventures over the coming months. For those in Australia, we encourage you to join the " Fungimap Australia"
Orange Pore Fungus Favolaschia claudopus, © Reiner Richter, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC-SA) East Warburton VIC, Australia.
Fungimap records and maps fungi. Spreading the word about the ecological importance of fungi, they advocate for fungal conservation and investment in mycology.
For more information on Fungimap, please visit the main Fungimap web page
IDS: please only add identification to other people's. The best records if you are absolutely certain. We are attempting to achieve the best data quality available, as it will appear in the Atlas of Living Australia. The best practice is to include the field guide or publication you have used to identify the species, to enable data checking to be as simple as possible.
The most observed species in March 2022
The most observed species in March is another Frog, the Green Tree Frog Ranoidea caerulea with 76 observations all from Queensland, you can check them all out here.
Green Tree Frog Ranoidea caerulea © Tony van Kampen, (@aavankampen), some rights reserved (CC-BY-SA) Yengarie, Queensland, Australia
Compared with last year there are observations at the time of writing this year, (March 2021 Challenge summary) however, we recorded 7.765 observations from 2320 species last year. The discrepancy comes from users uploading after the blog was written.
Highlights for the month
The orb weavers have been out in the parks, gardens and conservation areas across Australia with some fantastic observations being made like the one below.
Australian Golden Orbweaver Trichonephila edulis, observed by @anthonypaul at Warren Conservation Park, SA ,
Orchids Orchids Orchids
In Southern Australia, Midge Orchids are budding and flowering (see observations below by @rwl ). Indeed, some are producing capsules. we would like to encourage people to make observations and start photographing and recording these orchids on iNaturalist so that we get record phenology.
Rufous Midge-Orchid Genoplesium rufum,© Robert Lawrence (@rwl), some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC), Williamstown, Australia.
