Did you know there were rabbits on campus?
There are 6 observations of Desert Cottontail Rabbits on campus -- all since 2017. Most of these observations are from the center of campus around Powell Library and Kaplan Hall .
While this is a common species in LA County, very few are observed in the neighborhoods around UCLA south of Sunset.
During the City Nature Challenge I observed two together near Kaplan so there may be more on the way:
Thanks again for contributing observations to the 2019 City Nature Challenge.
My quick search shows that we collected 1683 new observations for the UCLA campus from Friday April 26th to Monday April 29th. This included several hundred species.
More importantly, 43 people contributed observations just on campus. That's a really awesome amount of participation for a small area like the campus.
The top observed species were cultivated plants. Make sure to mark these as "cultivated/captive" when you submit them. The top wild species observed where Dark-eyed Junco, Western Honey Bee, Fox Squirrel, Garden Snail and Sow Thistle.
Here's a link to the species observed: here. Keep in mind that many haven't had their IDs confirmed however.
Thanks everyone!
Andy
Here are some new iNaturalist guides to plants I made that might help you identify some of your plant observations:
Common Ornamental Plants of UCLA: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9605
Plants of Stone Canyon: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9604
Plants of Sage Hill: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9579
These guides are not complete and you can find a lot of plants on campus that are not in them. But they are a useful start for the common ones.
Remember to mark ornamental plants as "captive/cultivated"
Well the City Nature Challenge has flooded iNaturalist with new observations from the UCLA campus over the weekend.
43 users added 1,687 observations to iNaturalist between April 26th and April 29th from the UCLA campus. Currently these represent 353 species but many more still need identification.
This is a pretty incredible effort!
Many of these observations need further identification. You don't need to know exactly what something is to help identify it. Say an observation is marked as "unknown" but it's clearly a photo of a flowering plant. You can help by selecting "plants", "vascular plants", or "flowering plants" as the taxa. That first step helps a lot, and lets plant experts find observations of plants to help identify.
For more information on identifying observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started#how_ident_work
Also most of the plants on campus were planted by gardeners and landscapers. Please mark observations of cultivated plants as being "captive/cultivated". This distinguishes plants that live on campus on their own (such as weeds growing in a garden) from plants that were specifically planted on campus. If you can't tell or you aren't sure don't worry about it. Here is some more information on marking things as captive or cultivated: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#captive
Get out there and add your observations from Los Angeles and the UCLA campus.
I'll try and report some species and observation totals from time to time.
Here are some potentially useful resources for identifying things on campus:
Guide to birds on UCLA campus: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9042
Guide to flowering plants of UCLA campus: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9062
Guid to non-flowering plants of UCLA campus: https://www.inaturalist.org/guides/9063
Andy
As part of the City Nature Challenge I'll be hosting two iNaturalist events on campus on Sunday 4/28.
You can meet me at the Botanical Garden at 9 AM and we will document as much as possible in the garden.
Later in the day I'll be at Sage Hill at 2 PM. (meet at the parking lot by the Krieger Center: https://goo.gl/maps/NQPHvDMsx2MxJiaB9).
You can send me a message on iNaturalist if you have any questions.
Remember, any observations from around Los Angeles County from Friday to Monday count as part of the City Nature Challenge.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-los-angeles-county
Andy
The City Nature Challenge is coming up April 26th through 29th!
http://citynaturechallenge.org/
It's super easy to participate. Just observe things between April 26th and 29th and upload your observations to iNaturalist.
We would love to get more observations of wild plants, animals and fungi from the UCLA campus.
