Lizards On The Loose 2018/19 is a wrap, and we are so impressed by the fantastic effort that you all put into this year’s challenge! We absolutely blew away our record total of observations from last year – you submitted over 900 more observations which means the 2018/19 total has now passed 3,150 iNaturalist submissions!! We had 18 schools each submit at least 50 observations to the project showing the great variety of anole species and their habitats in the Miami area. We are so exceptionally proud of every single one of you lizard biologists in your quest to record data that has never been done before at this scale!

We are already exploring the many different ways in which we can use the data from your submissions of lizards to iNaturalist. These data are going to be vital in our quest to understand two important scientific questions; 1. How invasive lizards invade, and 2. How lizards are surviving in city environments! We hope you had as much fun spotting lizards and being scientists as we did working with you to identify all your observations.

If you have caught the bug and just can’t wait for Lizards On The Loose 2019/2020, then we encourage you to keep using iNaturalist to document the lizards, and any other creatures, you encounter. Next week, Miami is having an iNaturalist BONANZA. An event called The City Nature Challenge is happening on April 26-29. In this event, Miami will be competing against other cities from around the world to see who can upload the most observations of plants and wildlife to iNaturalist. The Upper Keys count too! You live in an amazing lizard hotspot, and so we want to make sure that we have a great lizard representation! As part of the City Nature Challenge, there are lots of free events in the Miami area that you can participate in. You can find more info on the Miami Nature Challenge iNaturalist project page (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-miami-and-upper-keys).

For teachers, there are resources to integrate the CNC into classroom activities that are aligned with NGSS standards (Check out http://citynaturechallenge.org/education-toolkit/ for more info!). The CNC Miami team has posted other resources for schools in the area, including a flyer and small assignment ready to give to students: (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OHOfGp09tYaM-woZaARjxzBE_ePbD3Ob). Students who have experience with Lizards On The Loose should already be experts on these! Hopefully we’ll see lots of your observations this coming week as you help to represent Miami in this world challenge and in next year’s Lizards On The Loose 2019/20 Challenge!

Chris and James

Hi lizard scientists!

There are only 10 days left of the 2018/19 Lizards on the Loose , and so far you have recorded over 2,220 observations of anoles to our iNaturalist project. This is absolutely amazing!! We’re desperate to break our record from last year (2,240 iNat observations), so keep those submissions coming! We also wanted to send out two quick reminders:

1) Each school is required to submit at least 50 observations to the Lizards on the Loose 2018 project to get full credit. Along with the other requirements for this Challenge (which you can reference here: https://thefairchildchalle.wixsite.com/fcmiddle/challenge-7), the deadline for iNaturalist submissions to count towards this total is Wednesday, April 10 at 5:00 pm . We absolutely encourage you to all continue submitting observations to iNaturalist after that (and we’ll continue to be there to help with IDs!), but April 10th is a hard deadline for this part of the Challenge.

2) We’ve noticed that some school accounts seem to have made more observations on iNaturalist than they have submitted to the project. Currently, observations submitted to iNaturalist but which are not in the project do not count towards your total. You need to add them to the Lizards on the Loose 2018 project to get full credit! Click this link to check the project leaderboard of to see how many observations have been officially submitted to the project from your account: https://bit.ly/2FE0neA. If an observation hasn’t been added to the project, it is really easy to do this now. You only need to edit the observations, add the perch data for the observation (was the lizard found on a natural or human-made structure), and submit it to the project. Click this link for instructions on how to do this so you get the full credit you deserve!: https://bit.ly/2FLpPQw

As always, if any questions or issues come up, you can message us on iNaturalist (@cthawley and @james_stroud_lizardsontheloose) and we’ll do our best to help. Happy lizard spotting!

Chris and James

We’ve neared the halfway point for Lizards on the Loose 2018, and we just broke 1500 observations! This is an amazing amount of anole observation work, and our thanks and congratulations go out to all the students and teachers who have contributed so far. We’ve also been impressed with many of your identification skills…we’ve got a lot of anole professionals in the making! As always, if any questions or issues come up, you can message us on iNaturalist (@cthawley and @james_stroud_lizardsontheloose) and we’ll do our best to help. As the weather starts to warm towards the end of February, the anoles should really ramp up their activity and start displaying everywhere, including to humans who walk by. Keep your cameras at the ready…we expect to see lots of great action shots this spring!

Keep up the great work!

Chris and James

Wow, Lizards on the Loose 2018 is off to a flying start! We've almost reached 700 observations, which is a way faster pace than last year. We've seen lots of great observations of all five of the common species of anoles in the Miami area including some really gorgeous pictures...it's been great fun to help you all with your IDs! Don't forget that you can message us (@cthawley and @james_stroud_lizardsontheloose) on iNaturalist if you have any questions or issues. We're happy to help however we can. Looking forward to seeing your observations and your SchoolScapes this coming spring.

Keep up the good work!

Chris and James