Rewriting the Record Book!
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
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