Diario del proyecto Great Southern Bioblitz 2021 southern Africa umbrella

Nothing is changing significantly. Identifications are not making any headways.
Our numbers are static.
See here
We should be lowering our outstanding IDs by 25% per day if we hope to get the backlog cleared before Friday. But the outstanding IDs are not moving

So what should we do?

Step 1. Clear the backlog of no IDs. - quickly go through
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella
Dont waste time: if you dont recognize something leave it to someone who does. These are now the difficult to do's and the garden plants.
[There are 300 of these]

Step 2. Clear the "plant" IDs. Yes there are people who think they are helping with a "plant" ID. We need to rescue these: These will also include a few species that have been seriously misidentified and need some action: Try this:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=order
Select your group (eg. Insects, Plants, Vertebrates).
Dont waste time: if you dont recognize something leave it to someone who does. These are now the difficult to do's and the garden plants. You can help here by

• if it is a tree, add the project "Trees of southern Africa" to the observation. (join it first here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/trees-of-southern-africa) - this will make it available to our tree specialists
  [There are 4,037 of these.]

If you are good with trees, then wont dont you try and help us identify the trees?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&verifiable=any&project_id=28880&d1=2021-10-22&d2=2021-10-25&place_id=any
[There are 102 of these]

We are looking for specialists to help us with: [is the number of IDs needed that are still above species level]
Please help if you can - or find someone who might be able to help.

Daisies [1,737] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=47604

The Fynbos big three [708] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_ids=54693,133387,64517

Peas [631] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=47122

Insects [602] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=Insecta&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex

Fungi [493] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=Fungi&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex

Spiders [441] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=Arachnida&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex

Irids [390] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=47781

Grasses [387] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=47434

Vygies [382] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=49320

Vertebrates [272] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&verifiable=any&project_id=28880&d1=2021-10-22&d2=2021-10-25&place_id=any

Sedges [236] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=47161

Molluscs [232] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=Mollusca&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex

Ferns [206] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&project_id=great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella&lrank=complex&taxon_id=121943

24 hours to go. Please finish the Identifications.

Instructions and progress over here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella/journal/59459-we-need-a-better-strategy
&
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2021-southern-africa-umbrella/journal/59378-time-for-identifications

Remember, you need identifications for species numbers. Get your IDs done to get your tally up!

Just collating any summaries or details found elsewhere.

Please join the projects below if you are interested and can help.
(Joining the projects also adds the projects to any observations of that group that you make)

There has been a request to contact the organizers with new species seen during the bioblitz.

Firstly, remember that we have been atlassing for over 10 years in southern Africa. So dont expect lots of new records.
If you want new records in your bioblitzes then you need to go and hunt them down. So unless you had such programmes/bioblitzes/surveys/searches in your area, it is not likely that you will have many.
Also, you should request your identifiers to note any special, unusual or mindboggling observations, and fave them, and call (use the @username option) the organizers

OK: here is one way to do it.
No way is perfect, and this is a quick hack. There are more involved ways of getting a more precise list - if you know one, tell us below.

Using Overstrand as an example (they asked first)

Go to your bioblitz place (use the search box, find the place and click about)
https://www.inaturalist.org/places/overstrand-wc-za
Go to your place checklist (bottom left of screen)
https://www.inaturalist.org/check_lists/1834500-Overstrand-Check-List
Download one of the two versions of the checklist.

Open the checklist in Excel
Convert the page to a table (Ctrl-a to select all data, and insert > table (with headings).)
Order "created at" from Z-A (higher date at top)

OK: the created at date is the date that the species was added to the checklist. So you can go down and select species added (in the "taxon" field) since the start of the Great Southern Bioblitz.

• Note - not all the observations will be from the bioblitz - some may be older observations identified for the first time during the blitz. You will need to check the '"first observation" and open it to check the date.
• Note - IDs were made from 22 Oct-8 Nov, so this is the period of creation that you are interested in. - but you must check each.
• Note - check any new IDs - make sure that they are not wrong IDs of species that do not occur in your area: especially people using the AI (what iNat suggests if you put the cursor in the ID box) to assist.

A faster way if you do are a smaller region with few observations would be to:

Search for your bioblitz place: select observations
filter by date: until 21 October 2021 (to exclude the bioblitz data)
download - this will be all the observations for the region.

select observations from the blioblitz project
download - this will be the observations for the bioblitz

Open the downloads in excel and save them on one spreadsheet. Note that these are observations (not species).

Use the insert pivottable option to get a species summary for each list.

Select the two columns with species in (one for the place and one for the bioblitz)
choose conditional formatting, with the "format only unique or duplicate values"

The highlighted species will now show species seen only during the bioblitz or only not in the bioblitz depending on the column

This is limited to sites with less than 200,000 observations.
It may take quite a while to download