We've created another way to encourage you to submit observations: scavenger hunts! We've arranged scavenger hunts around two themes—food webs and butterflies—and created supporting materials to help you explore biodiversity while learning more about these topics.

Food Web Mission

Butterfly Mission

These biodiversity scavenger hunts were created especially with families in mind, but anyone can use them. If you or someone you know wants a little more guidance exploring biodiversity in your neighborhood, download these documents to take outside with you.

Right now they are just pdfs you can download to view on a mobile device or print out, but our long-term plan is to make it easy to contribute via greatnatureproject.org and/or an app. Please let us know if you have thoughts or suggestions.

If you've filled out a profile in greatnatureproject.org too, you should have received an email about this today. We sincerely apologize if you clicked on the links right away and found they didn't work. They work now!

We want everyone to get outside during that time for our global snapshot of biodiversity from May 15-25. I have a special challenge for you that I'm going to take on myself.

Can you make at least one observation from each of the 13 iconic taxa? That's at least one of each of the following:
-Plants
-Protozoans
-Fungi (including lichens)
-Mollusks
-Ray-finned fishes
-Birds
-Reptiles
-Amphibians
-Mammals
-Insects
-Arachnids
-Other Animals (stuff that doesn't fall into another more specific animal category listed above, like most other invertebrates)
-Kelp, Diatoms, and Allies

Some of these are going to be easy, but it's definitely going to vary from place to place. You might have to brush up on what's in Kingdom Chromista and get your hands on a microscope for the Protozoans.

Rules:

1. It has to have a photo, date, and location.
2. It has to be observed during May 15-25 (your local time).
3. You must upload it by Wednesday, May 27 (your local time).
4. It has to have a correct identification that ties it to one of those taxa.

At the end of the snapshot, I'll recognize everyone who met the challenge in another journal post. I hope you'll use this as an excuse to explore something out of your comfort zone!

It's just past midnight U.S. Eastern Time and the global snapshot of biodiversity is drawing to a close around the world, but it's not too late to submit your observations! Right now there are more than 34,000 observations from the last 11 days. How high will it climb? Do you have all of yours submitted?

Check out the count here:
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/natgeo-gnp-global-snapshot

Later this week I'll crunch the numbers and let everyone know the final count. In the meantime, get those observations in, keep helping each other add IDs, and see who's new from your area!