Spring 2024 Personal Bioblitz

Main Content

Quick Links

• Results of the Personal Bioblitz 2024
• Our project on iNaturalist
• Information poster (300k PDF)
• Facebook group
• Email list at Rutgers (subscribe for updates)
• How to get started on iNaturalist

Who Can Participate?

You can be part of the Spring 2024 Personal Bioblitz if you belong to at least one of these categories, and you can live anywhere in the world:

• Faculty or staff or students at Rutgers University, NJ, USA
• Rutgers alumni, visitors, volunteers, Master Gardeners, Environmental Students, any members of Rutgers organizations and programs – we are inclusive, if you think you belong, you are welcome!
• Member of any organization that is collaborating with Rutgers.
• Family member of any Rutgers-affiliated person.
• Friend or friend of friends of a Rutgers-affiliated person, online friends are OK!
• Previous Personal Bioblitzer
• Special invite by a Personal Bioblitzer.

Note – ‘Friend’ can include anybody that is invited by someone already in the Bioblitz, this year or previous years. Invites might be sent out via e-mail, Facebook, or any other way by current Bioblitzers. We love that you spread the word and invite others.

How to Join?

• Create a free iNaturalist account. (see below, under Getting Started)
• On iNaturalist, go to the Personal Bioblitz 2024 Project, click Join (top right corner), and you will become a member. Read on below about how to use iNaturalist.

General Rules

• iNaturalist focuses on wild and naturalized species that survive without human assistance, so we will follow this general rule (see below for specifics).
• You have to have seen or heard a species in person. If someone finds a wild species and shows it to you in its original location, then you can count it, as long as the species is not labeled with its species name and you really experience it yourself.
• We expect all participants to be helpful to all other participants, both in person and online on the iNaturalist website, and be courteous and play nice, especially in the comment fields on iNaturalist. All comments are public and visible by anyone.
• Species observations start at local times on 00:00 a.m. on March 1, and end at midnight (11:59 p.m.) on May 15, 2024.
• All observation data from the Bioblitz have to be uploaded by the end of the day on May 25, 2024.
• Observations follow the honor system; we trust you that you fill in the correct date and place and species (to the best of your knowledge), and all observation data is public and form part of permanent research records that might be used for important scientific research in the future. No fooling around and faking observations, or you might get banned from iNaturalist.
• Your observations can be at the species level, but also at higher levels (Plants, Birds, etc.)
• Each species observation has to have a date and have a geographic location.
• Photos, when possible, are optional, but strongly encouraged as documentation of what you saw (we know, birds and some other animals are fast and furious, no photos needed for such things). If you have no photo your observation will be automatically classified as ‘casual’ in iNaturalist, but your species will show up in your species list and count in this project.
• Every counted observation at the end of the project has to have a taxonomic name (even if just a larger group name, like ‘gilled fungus, Basidiomycetes’ or ‘snake, Serpentes’), has to have a date and place of location, and been seen and uploaded by you in person. If not, then these observations will be removed from the iNaturalist project.
• Everybody running this project is a volunteer; we have no paid staff.
• The leadership team has the right to remove any observations and any person from the project that does not follow the rules.
• You are responsible for following the general iNaturalist rules, and as part of the project the iNaturalist web site will generate a life list for you, and you can continue to use iNaturalist afterwards for anything else you see outside of the goals for this project. If one of your observations is removed from this project (see above), it is still on iNaturalist if you don’t remove it yourself.

Challenges

• Who will report the most observations?
• Who will observe the most species?
• Which will be the most reported species?
• How many observations can we collect together?
• How many species can we see together?
• Can we break previous years’ records?

Which Species and Observations Count?

YES, Count it!

1. The observation or collection date is within the project dates.
2. You saw or heard the species. Even better, have a photo of it.
3. Outdoor species, unassisted* (ex. birds, insects, mosses, trees)
4. Indoor species, unassisted* (ex. cockroaches, mice, bread mold, oyster pea crabs)
5. Remnants of once alive species (ex. antlers, roadkill, shells, dried fruits, animal tracks) are OK as long as discovered by you, you know its original collection date and geographic origin, and it was first collected during the Bioblitz period [mark the type of remnant in your iNaturalist observation notes field].
6. Microscopic species, as long as the organism is wild-collected during the bioblitz period. We highly encourage the use of microscopes and hand lenses to find and identify protozoa, planktons, fungi, parasites, bacteria and other small living things.
7. Species as part of education and research projects collected in the wild (as long as you found it and reported it during the project time frame).
8. Humans (Homo sapiens)
9. Feral populations of former pets, crops, and farm animals.
10. Invasive, parasitic, and alien species (weeds, pests, etc.).
11. Viruses are only allowed if their effect on plants and other organisms are clearly visible to the human eye, documented with photos, and specific to the virus (note, human disease viruses only identified by symptoms are not allowed).
12. Species effects that can be identified distinctly to a particular species or group of species are allowed, such as galls, tracks, leaf miners, chewing marks, egg cocoons, spider webs, feathers and eggs, but only if detailed photos are included.

NO, doesn’t count!

1. The species is already labeled (the idea here is DISCOVERY)
2. Using human or animal disease symptoms to identify a pathogenic species.
3. Pets, supermarket produce, spices (anything sold and traded with a label on it; with the exception that wild species that inadvertently show up with bought items are OK, like parasites in oysters or spiders in bananas).
4. Species maintained in greenhouses, museums, herbaria, zoos, aquaria, gardens, etc.
5. Labeled bacterial and other organismal cultures kept in a lab are not allowed.
6. Anything that can only securely be identified with DNA data (if you can visually identify it to a higher-ranking group [class, family, etc.], then list it under the higher-ranking group’s name, and it is OK to include.)
7. If you are uncertain if your species should be counted, please contact the Leadership Team and Lena Struwe or ask in the Facebook group.

* Unassisted species are those that live without assistance from humans. Pets, houseplants, and planted crops are considered assisted if they rely on humans to survive. Feral cats and persistent crops in abandoned fields are unassisted since they no longer rely on humans.

Getting started on iNaturalist

• Go to the iNaturalist website (www.inaturalist.org) and open a free account (if you don’t have one) and familiarize yourself with their very user-friendly website.
• Explore the ‘get-started’ webpage on iNaturalist.
• If you want, download the Android or iOS app for your smartphone or tablet for easy observation reporting (links at the bottom of the iNaturalist webpage). You can also download the SEEK app as a tool to find and identify species around you.
• If you don’t have a digital camera of some kind, we suggest you get one. You can upload photos to iNaturalist and you can get help identify species from your photos. Only observations with photos can reach Research Grade status on iNaturalist through the confirmation of your species identification by others.
• A sound recording device might be good if you want to learn bird songs and frog calls, and sound files can be uploaded too.

How Do I Use Inaturalist for This Project?

• All observations have to be uploaded to the iNaturalist website, and added to the project called Personal Bioblitz Spring 2024.
• You first have to join the project as a member on iNaturalist before you can add observations to it. After you have joined, it should show up as a project in your list and you can add observations to it when you upload observations or later (via website or app).
• Observations can be uploaded even if they are not identified to species at first (you can change all identifications and other data for all uploaded records later).
• You can also keep a simple handwritten or computer-based list of observations, list of observations, take photographs with a digital camera, keep track of places and dates, and upload these observations to iNaturalist when you have the time. Instructions for upload and linking to photos are on the iNaturalist website.
• All observations that are uploaded to iNaturalist are available to the public and visible to everybody on the iNaturalist website.
• Observations follow the honor system, we trust you that you fill in the correct date and place and species (to the best of your knowledge). People may comment on your observations if they don’t seem to have the correct identification, date and place.
• Your observations might be used for research by anybody in the world, so your observations add to the total knowledge for these species.
• Your observations can be at the species level, but also at higher levels (Plants, Birds, Ciliates, etc.)
• Each species observation has to have a date and geographic place (GPS location on a map). Locations can be open or obscured, but not hidden (contact us for advice on endangered species—many will be automatically obscured by iNaturalist).
• Photos, when possible, are optional, but strongly encouraged as documentation of what you saw (we know, birds and some other animals are fast and furious, no photos needed for such things). It is easy to upload digital photos to iNaturalist either from your computer, from your tablet/smartphone, or from a Flickr account.
• If you want help with identification you have to have a photo and/or a sound recording of what you saw/heard.
• If you want people to agree with your species identifications (and get a Community ID confirmation on your observations) you should also help out with by commenting on others’ observation to the best of your knowledge. Only agree with other species ID’s if you think they are correct based on your knowledge of that species group or look into the suggested ID and make sure it seems reasonable. Don’t assume they are correct, and then just agree because you know a person. Some participants will have knowledge in many taxonomic groups, others have very little, so we do not expect that everybody can help out equally with species identifications. But everybody can learn and share knowledge to the best of their ability.
• Observations without date or geographic location will be deleted from our iNaturalist project, since the observation is incomplete. Your observation will still be on iNaturalist, just not in the Bioblitz project.
• Feel free to add observations to your iNaturalist account before and after the Personal Bioblitz is going on (to start or continue your life list!), but don’t add them to the Personal Bioblitz project on iNaturalist.

How Do I Get Help with Identification?

• First, to be able to get help you will need one of these things: the species in question (alive or dead), a photo of it, or a sound recording.
• You can upload a photo or sound to iNaturalist to see if someone can help you identify it. Your observations are visible by anybody in the world on iNaturalist, so you might get help from people from anywhere, including people that are locally based and part of this project.
• Contact taxonomic expertise, anywhere where you can find it (Facebook groups, online identification forums, researchers, societies and organizations).
• We will also post recommended websites and literature for species identification on the project website.

Who Runs This Project? Who Do I Contact?

The project is led by Dr. Lena Struwe and a Leadership Team (listed as managers and curators on the iNaturalist project webpage). For questions, contact Lena Struwe.

This project is run by Chrysler Herbarium at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University in collaboration with iNaturalist (California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society).

For questions or comments about this site, contact lena.struwe@rutgers.edu.